Penelope regarded her with an odd expression.

“Maryon’s still in love with Nan,” she observed quietly, “I saw that at the studio.”

Kitty laughed a trifle harshly.

“Nan must be ‘Maryon-proof’ now, anyway,” she asserted.

Penelope remained silent, her eyes brooding and reflective.  That odd, magician’s charm which Rooke so indubitably possessed might prove difficult for any woman to resist—­doubly difficult for a woman whose entire happiness in life had fallen in ruins.

The entrance of the maid with a telegram gave her the chance to evade answering.  She tore open the envelope and perused the wire with a puzzled frown on her face.  Then she read it aloud for Kitty’s benefit, still with the same rather bewildered expression.

“Is Nan with you?  Reply Trenby, Century Club, Exeter.”

“I don’t understand it,” she said doubtfully.

“I do!”

She and Kitty both looked up at the sound of the mocking, contemptuous voice, Nan was standing, fully dressed, on the threshold of the room.

“Nan!” Penelope almost gasped.  “I thought you were still asleep!”

Nan glanced at her curiously.

“I’ve not been asleep—­all night,” she said evenly.  “I asked your maid for a cup of tea some time ago.  How d’you do, Kitty?”

She kissed the latter perfunctorily, her thoughts evidently preoccupied.  She was very pale and heavy violet shadows lay beneath her eyes.  To Penelope it seemed as though she had become immensely frailer and more fragile-looking in the passage of a single night.  Refraining from comment, however, she held out the telegram.

“What does it mean, Nan?” she asked.  “I thought you said you’d left a note telling Roger you were coming here?”

Nan read the wire in silence.  Her face turned a shade whiter than before, if that were possible, and there was a smouldering anger in her eyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers and tossed it into the fire.

“No answer,” she said shortly.  As soon as the maid had left the room, she burst out furiously: 

“How dare he?  How dare he think such a thing?”

“What’s the matter?” asked Penelope in a perturbed voice.

Nan turned to her passionately.

“Don’t you see what he means? Don’t you see? . . .  It’s because I didn’t write to him yesterday from here.  He doesn’t believe the note I left behind—­he doesn’t believe I’m with you!”

“But, my dear, where else should you be?” protested Penelope.  “And why shouldn’t he believe it?”

Nan shrugged her shoulders.

“I told you we’d had a row.  It—­it was rather a big one.  He probably thinks I’ve run away and married—­oh, well”—­she laughed mirthlessly—­“anyone!”

“Nan!”

“That’s what’s happened”—­nodding.  “It was really . . . quite a big row.”  She paused, then continued, indignantly: