“My dear Kit, I’ve taken so many steps that I’ve repented!  But when you’re in the middle of a staircase you must inevitably continue taking steps—­either up or down.  And if I take this one, and repent it—­well, at all events it will be the last step.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Kitty drily.

“Where are you wandering now?” gibed Nan.  “Into the Divorce Courts—­or the Thames?  Surely you know me better than that!  I value my creature comforts far too much to exploit either, I assure you.  The Divorce Courts are muddy—­and the Thames is wet.”

Kitty was silent a moment, her heart torn by the bitterness in the girl’s voice.

“You’d regret it, I know,” she insisted gravely.

Nan rose from her cushions, swinging her hat in her hand.

“Always remembering that a prophet hath no honour in his own country,” she commented curtly over her shoulder, and sauntered away towards the house, defiantly humming the air of a scandalous little French song as she went.

Kitty sank back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations.  Truly matters had gone very crookedly.  Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble.  Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan’s thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her.  And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was philandering desperately with a totally unsuitable second string.

“Dreaming, Kitty?” said a voice, and looking up with the frown still wrinkling her pretty brows, she saw Lord St. John approaching.

“If I am, it must be a nightmare, I think!” she answered lugubriously.

The old man’s kindly face took on a look of concern.

“Any nightmare that I can dispel, my dear?”

Kitty patted the fine-bred, wrinkled old hand that rested on the edge of the hammock.

“I know you love to play the fairy godfather to us all, but in this case I’m afraid you can’t help.  In fact, you’ve done all you could—­made her free to choose.”

“It’s Nan, then?” he said quickly.

Kitty laughed rather mirthlessly.

“’M.  Isn’t it always Nan who is causing us anxiety one way or another?”

“And just now?”

“Haven’t you guessed?  I’m sure you have!”

St. John’s lips twisted in a whimsical smile.

“I suppose you mean that six-foot-odd of bone and muscle from Trenby Hall?”

“Of course I mean him!  Just because she’s miserable over that Rooke business and because Roger is as insistent as a man with that kind of chin always is, she’ll be Mrs. Roger before we can stop her—­and miserable ever after!”

“Isn’t the picture a trifle overdrawn?” St. John pulled forward one of the garden chairs and sat down.  “Trenby’s a very decent fellow, I should imagine, and comes of good old stock.”