“How detestable you are, Kitty.  I promise you one thing—­it’s going to be much worse for the lion than the lamb.”

Mrs. Barry Seymour sat up suddenly, the laughter dying out of her eyes.

“Nan,” she admonished, “you leave Roger alone.  He’s as Nature made him and not fair game for such as you.  Leave him to some simple country maiden—­Edna Langdon, for instance, who rides straight to hounds and whose broad acres—­or what will be her broad acres when Papa Langdon is gathered—­’march’ with his.”

“Surely I can out-general her?”—­impertinently.

“Out-general her?  Of course you can.  But that’s just what you mustn’t do.  I won’t allow you to play with Roger.  He’s too good a sort—­even if he is a bit heavy in hand.”

“I agree.  He’s quite a good sort.  But he needs educating. . . .  And perhaps I’m not going to ‘play’ with him.”

“Not?  Then what . . .  Nan, you never mean to suggest that you’re in earnest?”

Nan regarded her consideringly.

“And why not, pray?  Isn’t he well-seeming?  Hasn’t he broad acres of his own?  Do I not find favour in his eyes? . . .  Surely the last four weeks have shown you that much?”

Kitty made a small grimace.

“They certainly have.  But seriously, this is all nonsense, Nan.  You and Roger Trenby are about as unsuited to each other as any man and woman could possibly be.  In addition to which he has the temper of a fiend when roused—­and you’d be sure to rouse him!  You know a dozen men more suitable!”

“Do I?  It seems to me I’m particularly destitute of men friends just now, either ‘suitable’ or otherwise.  They’ve been giving me the cold shoulder lately with commendable frequency.  So why not the M.F.H. and his acres?”

Kitty detected the bitter, hurt note in her voice, and privately congratulated herself on a letter she had posted only the previous evening telling Peter that everything was obviously over between Nan and Maryon Rooke, as the latter had failed to put in an appearance at St. Wennys—­and would he come down to Mallow Court?  With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan’s bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could not fail to be.

She had been feeling rather disturbed about Nan ever since they had come to Mallow.  The Nan she knew, wayward, tantalising, yet always lovable, seemed to have disappeared, and instead here was this embittered, moody Nan, very surely filled with some wild notion of defying fate by marrying out of hand and so settling for ever the disappointments of the past—­and whatever chances of happiness there might be waiting for her in the lap of destiny.  Settling them in favour of one most final and lasting disappointment of them all—­of that Kitty felt convinced.

“Nan, don’t be a fool!” she insisted vehemently.  “You’d be wretched if you married the wrong man—­far, far more wretched in the future than you’ve ever been in the past.  You’d only repent that last step once, and that would be—­always!”