“That’s not a sigh of repletion, Penny,” she explained.  “Though really your cook might have earned it? . . .  But oh! isn’t this nice?” Inwardly she was reflecting that at just about this time Roger, together with Lady Gertrude and Isobel, would be returning from Great-aunt Rachel’s funeral, only to learn of her own flight from Trenby Hall.

“Yes,” agreed Penelope.  “It really was angelic of Roger to spare you at a moment’s notice.”

Nan gave a grim little smile.

“You dear innocent!  Roger—­didn’t know—­I was coming.”

“What!”

“No, I just thought I’d come . . . and he—­they were all away . . . and I came!  I left a note behind, telling him I was going to stay with you.  So he won’t be anxious!”

“Roger didn’t know you were coming!” repeated Penelope.  “Nan”—­a sudden light illuminating the dark places—­“have you had a quarrel?”

“Yes”—­shortly.  “A sort of quarrel.”

“And you came straight off here? . . .  Oh, Nan, what a fool’s trick!  He will be furious!”

Once or twice Penelope had caught a glimpse of that hot-headed temper which lay hidden beneath Roger’s somewhat blunt exterior.

“Lady Gertrude will be furious!” murmured Nan reminiscently.

“I think she’ll have the right to be,” answered Penelope, with quiet rebuke in her tones.  “It really was abominable of you to run away like that.”

Nan shrugged her shoulders, and Ralph looked across at her, smiling broadly.

“You’re a very exasperating young person, Nan,” he said.  “If you were going to be my wife, I believe I should beat you.”

“Well, that would at least break the monotony of things,” she retorted.  But her lips set themselves in a straight, hard, line at the remembrance of Roger’s stormy threat:  “I might even do that.”

“Is it monotony you’re suffering from?” asked Ralph quickly.

She nodded.

“I’m fed up with the country and its green fields—­never anything but green fields!  They’re so eternally, damnably green!”

“Oh, Nan!  And the scenery in Cornwall is perfectly lovely!” protested Penelope feebly.

“Man cannot live by bread alone, Penny—­nor scenery either.  I just yearned for London.  So I came.”

The next morning, much to Nan’s surprise, brought neither letter nor telegram from Roger.

“I quite expected a wire:  ‘Return at once.  All will be forgiven,’” she said frivolously, as lunch time came and still no message.

“Perhaps he isn’t prepared to forgive you,” suggested Ralph.

Nan stared at him without answering, her eyes dilating curiously.  She had never even dreamed of such a possibility, and a sudden wild hope flamed up within her.

“It’s rather a knock to a man’s pride, you know, if the girl he’s engaged to does a bolt the moment his back’s turned,” pursued Ralph.

“It was madness!” said Penelope with the calmness of despair.