"That clinched matters in your mind, I suppose?" she said contemptuously. "But it's quite simple. Penelope didn't wire because I wouldn't let her."
He was silent. It was quite true that since Nan's disappearance from Trenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind. The possibility that she might have left him altogether in a wild fit of temper had not seemed to him at all outside the bounds of probability. And it was equally true that when another day had elapsed without bringing further news of her, he had become a prey to the increasing atmosphere of suspicion which, thanks to the gossip that always gathers in the servants' hall, had even spread to the village.
Nor had either his mother or cousin made the least attempt to stem his rising anger. Far from it. Lady Gertrude had expressed her opinion with a conciseness that was entirely characteristic.
"You made an unwise choice, my son. Nan has no sense of her future position as your wife."
Isobel had been less blunt in her methods, but a corrosive acid had underlain her gentle speech.
"I can't understand it, Roger. She--she was fond of you, wasn't she? Oh"--with a quick gesture of her small brown hands--"she _must_ have been!"
"I don't know so much about the 'must have been,'" Roger had admitted ruefully. "She cared--once--for someone else."
Isobel's question shot out as swiftly as the tongue of an adder.
"I can't tell you," he answered reluctantly. He wished to God he could! That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he had been unconsciously afraid! He was actively, consciously jealous of him now.
Then Isobel's subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.
"Oh, Roger, Nan couldn't--she would never have run away to be--with him?"
She had given words to the very fear which had been lurking at the back of his mind from the moment he had read the briefly-worded note which Nan had left for him.
Throughout the night this belief had grown and deepened within him, and with the dawn he had motored across country to Exeter, driving like a madman, heedless of speed limits. There he had dispatched a telegram to Penelope, and having waited unavailingly for a reply he had come straight on to town by rail. The mark of those long hours of sickening apprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned to Nan when she informed him that it was she who had stopped Penelope from sending any answer.