“Is it anything to do with Nan?” she asked gently, her thoughts going back to the talk she had had with Penelope before the bridge party began.

A rather weary smile curved his lips.

“It doesn’t seem much use trying to keep you in the dark, does it?”

“I must know,” she urged.  Adding with feminine guile: 

“Of course I should be frightfully hurt if I thought you weren’t coming just because you didn’t want to.  But still I’d rather know—­even if that were the reason.”

“Not want to?” he broke out, his control suddenly snapping.  “I’d give my soul to come!”

The bitterness in his voice—­in the lazy, drawling tones she knew so well—­let in a flood of light upon the darkness in which she had been groping.

“Peter—­oh, Peter!” she cried tremulously.  “You’re not—­you don’t mean that you care for Nan—­seriously?”

“I don’t think many men could be with her much without caring,” he answered simply.

“Oh, I’m sorry—­I’m sorry! . . .  I—­I never thought of that when I asked you to be a pal to her.”  Her voice shook uncontrollably.

He smiled again—­the game half-weary, half-tenderly amused smile which was so characteristic.

“You needn’t be sorry,” he said, speaking with great gentleness.  “I shall never be sorry that I love her.  It’s only that just now she doesn’t need me.  That’s why I won’t come down to Mallow.”

“Not need you!”

“No.  The man she needs has come back.  I can’t tell you how I know—­you’ll have to trust me over that—­but I do know that Maryon Rooke has come back to her and that he is the man who means everything to her.”

Kitty’s brows drew together as she pondered the question whether Peter were right or wrong in his opinion.

“I don’t think you’re right,” she said at last in tones of conviction.  “I don’t believe she ‘needs’ him at all.  I dare-say he still fascinates her.  He has”—­she hesitated—­“a curious sort of fascination for some women.  And the sooner Nan is cured of it the better.”

“I’ve done—­all that I could,” he answered briefly.

“Don’t I know that?” Kitty slipped her arm into his.  “You’ve been splendid!  That’s just why I want you to come down to us in Cornwall.”

“But if Rooke is there—­”

“Maryon?” She paused, then went on with a chilly little note of haughtiness in her voice.  “I certainly don’t propose to invite Maryon Rooke to Mallow.”

“Still, you can’t prevent him from taking a summer holiday at St. Wennys.”

St. Wennys was a small fishing village on the Cornish coast, barely a mile away from Mallow Court.

“He won’t come—­I’m sure!” asserted Kitty.  “Sir Robert Burnham lives quite near there—­he’s Maryon’s godfather—­and they hate each other like poison.”

“Why?”