Nan looked puzzled. What did it matter to Lady Gertrude who lived there?
"No one, just now. The Fentons are going to stay there, when they come back, while they look for a house."
"But they are not there now?" persisted Lady Gertrude.
Nan shook her head, wondering what was the drift of so much questioning. She was soon to know.
"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would be quite impossible for you to go there."
Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.
"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"
"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each stayed there alone--heaps of times--when the other was away."
"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax--I suppose _you_ would call it Bohemian--in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."
Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object--very strenuously!
"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."
With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring stonily out of the window.
She felt helpless--helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would think she was running away--playing the coward, and that it would be a bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high standard which he had always set before her.