“I’d like to come very much.  When shall we do it?”

Kitty stirred idly in her hammock.

“You’ve let yourself in for it now, Roger,” she remarked.  “Nan is the most impatient person alive.”

Once more Nan looked up, with lazy “blue violet” eyes whose seductive sweetness sent an unaccustomed thrill down Roger’s spine.  She was so different, this slender bit of womanhood with her dusky hair and petal skin, from the sturdy, thick-booted, sporting type of girl to which he was accustomed.  For Roger Trenby very rarely left his ancestral acres to essay the possibilities of the great outer world, and his knowledge of women had been hitherto chiefly gleaned from the comely—­if somewhat stolid—­damsels of the countryside, with whom he had shot and fished and hunted since the days of his boyhood.

“Don’t be alarmed by what Kitty tells you, Mr. Trenby,” Nan smiled gently as she spoke and Roger found himself delightedly watching the adorable way her lips curled up at the corners and the faint dimple which came and went.  “She considers it a duty to pick holes in poor me—­good for my morals, you know.”

“It must be a somewhat difficult occupation,” he returned, bowing awkwardly.

Into Nan’s mind flashed the recollection of a supple, expressive, un-English bow, and of a deftness of phrase compared with which Trenby’s laboured compliment savoured of the elephantine.  Swiftly she dismissed the memory, irritably chasing it from her mind, for was it not five long, black, incomprehensible weeks since Peter had vanished from her ken?  From the day of the bridge-party at the Edenhall flat, she had neither seen nor heard from him, and during those five silent weeks she had come to recognise the fact that Peter meant much more to her than merely a friend, just as he himself had realised that she was the one woman in the world for him.  And between them, now and always, stood Celia, the woman in possession.

“Well, then, what about Thursday next for going over to the kennels?  Are you disengaged?”

Trenby’s voice broke suddenly across her reverie.  She threw him a brilliant smile.

“Yes.  Thursday would do very well.”

“Agreed, then.  I’ll call for you at half-past ten,” said Trenby.  “Well”—­rising reluctantly to his feet—­“I must be moving on now.  I have to go over one of my off-farms before dinner, so I’ll say good-bye.”

He lifted his cap and strode away, Nan watching his broad-shouldered well-knit figure with reflective eyes, the while irrepressible little gurgles and explosions of mirth emanated from the hammock.

At last Nan burst out irritably: 

“What on earth are you giggling about, Kitty?”

“At the lion endeavouring to lie down with the lamb,” submitted Kitty meekly.

“Don’t talk in parables.”

“It’s a very easy one to interpret”—­Kitty succumbed once more to a gale of laughter.  “It was just too delicious to watch you and Roger together!  You’d much better leave him alone, my dear, and play with the dolls you’re used to.”