“Did I hurt?  I’m awfully sorry.”  His voice was gruff.  “What he wanted to do was to crush the slim, bruised foot against his lips.  The very touch of its satiny skin against his hand sent queer tremors through every nerve of his big frame.

“There!” he said at last, gently letting her foot rest once more on the sofa.  “Is that comfortable?”

“Quite, thanks.”  Then, turning to the whip’s wife as she re-entered the room carrying a jug of hot water, she went on, with that inborn instinct of hers to charm and give pleasure:  “What a nice, sunny room you have here, Mrs. Denman.  I’m afraid I’m making a dreadful mess of it.  I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t mention it, miss.  ’Tis only a drop of water to clear away, and it’s God mercy you weren’t killed, by they savage ’ounds.”

Nan bestowed one of her delightful smiles upon the good woman, who, leaving the hot water in readiness; hurried out to tell her husband that if Miss Davenant was going to be mistress of the Hall, why, then, ’twould be a lucky day for everyone concerned, for a nicer, pleasanter-spoken young lady—­and she just come round from a faint and all!—­she never wished to meet.

Nan put her hand up to her throat.

“Something hurts here,” she said in a troubled voice.  “Did one of the hounds leap up at my neck?”

“No,” replied Trenby, frowning as his eyes rested on the long red weal striping the white flesh disclosed by the Y-shaped neck of her frock.  “One of those dunder-headed fools cut you with his whip by mistake.  I’d like to shoot him—­and Vengeance too!”

With a wonderfully gentle touch he laid a cloth wrung out in hot water across the angry-looking streak, and repeated the process until some of the swelling went down.  At last he desisted, wiping dry the soft girlish throat as tenderly as a nurse might wipe the throat of a baby.

More than a little touched, Nan smiled at him.

“You’re making a great fuss of me,” she said.  “After all, I’m not seriously hurt, you know.”

“No,” he replied briefly.  “But you might have been killed.  For a moment I thought you were going to be killed in front of my eyes.”

“I don’t know that it would have mattered, very much if I had been,” she responded indifferently.

“It would have mattered to me.”  His voice roughened again:  “Nan—­Nan—­”

He broke off huskily and, casting a swift glance at his face, she realised that the tide which had been gradually rising throughout the foregoing weeks of close companionship had suddenly come to its full and that no puny effort of hers could now arrest and thrust it back.

Roger had risen to his feet.  His face was rather white as he stood looking down at her, and the piercing eyes beneath the oddly sunburnt brows held a new light in them.  They were no longer cold, but burned down upon her with the fierce ardour of passion.