Nan turned back her sleeve and looked at the red weals now darkening into a bruise which his grasp had made on the white skin of her arm.  Then she re-read the letter in her hand.  It bore yesterday’s date and was very brief.

“I’m hoping to get out of town very soon now, and I propose to come down and inspect my new property with a view to re-decorating the house.  I could never live with dear godfather’s Early Victorian chairs and tables!  So you may expect to see me almost any day now on the doorstep of Mallow Court.

“Yours as always.

“MARYON.”

Nan’s first impulse was to beg him not to come.  She had screwed up her courage to fulfil her pledge to marry Roger, and she felt that the presence in the neighbourhood of Maryon—­Maryon with his familiar charm and attraction, and his former love for her intensified by losing her—­might be a somewhat disturbing factor.

Looking out over the sea, she smiled to think how futile Maryon’s charm would be to touch her if she were going to marry Peter Mallory.  She would have no wish even to see him.  But yesterday’s scene with Roger had increased her fear and dread of her coming marriage, and she was conscious of a captive’s longing for one more taste of freedom, for one more meeting with the man who had played a big part in the old Bohemian life she had loved so well.

For long she hesitated how to answer Maryon’s letter, sitting there on the seaward wall, her chin cupped in her hand.  Should she write and ask him to postpone his visit?  Or reply just as though she were expecting him?  At last her decision was taken.  She tore up his letter and, strolling to the edge of the cliff, tossed the pieces into the sea.  She would send no answer at all, leaving it to the shuttle of fate to weave the next strand in her life.

And a week later Maryon Rooke came down to take possession of his new domain.

“I can take six clear weeks now,” he told Nan.  “That’s better than my first plan of week-ending down here.  I have been working hard since you blew into my studio one good day, and now for six weeks I toil not, neither do I spin.  Unless.” he added suddenly, “I paint a portrait of you while I’m here!”

Nan glanced at him delightedly.

“I should love it.  Only you won’t paint my soul, will you, Maryon, as you did Mrs. T. Van Decken’s?”

His eyes narrowed a little.

“I don’t know, Nan.  I think I should rather like to paint it.  Your soul would be an intricate piece of work.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t make nearly as nice a picture as my face.  I think it’s rather a plain soul.”

“The answer to that is obvious,” he replied lightly.  “Well, I shall talk to Trenby about the portrait.  I suppose permission from headquarters would be advisable?”

Nan made a small grimace.

“Of the first importance, my friend.”

Rather to Nan’s surprise, Roger quite readily gave permission for Rooke to paint her portrait.  In fact, he appeared openly delighted with the idea that her charming face should be permanently transferred to canvas.  In his own mind he had promptly decided to buy the portrait when completed and add it to the picture gallery at the Hall, where many a lovely Trenby of bygone generations looked down, smiling or sad, from the walls.