Neither Penelope nor Kitty sensed the imminence of any real danger. But Sandy, in whose memory the recollection of the winter's happenings was still alive and vivid, felt disturbed and not a little anxious. Nan's moods were an open book to him, and just now they were not very pleasant reading.
"What about the concerto?" he asked her one day. "Aren't you going to do anything with it?"
"Do anything with it?" she repeated vaguely.
"Yes, of course. Get it published--push it! You didn't write it just for fun, I suppose?"
A faintly mocking smile upturned the corners of her mouth.
"I think Roger considers I wrote it expressly to annoy him," she submitted.
"Rot!" he replied succinctly. "Just because he's not a trained musician you appear to imagine he's devoid of ordinary appreciation."
"He is," she returned. "He hates my music. Yes, he does"--as Sandy seemed about to protest. "He hates it!"
"Look here, Nan"--he became suddenly serious--"you're not playing fair with Trenby. He's quite a good sort, but because he isn't a scatter-brained artist like yourself, you're giving him a rotten time."
From the days when they had first known each other Sandy had taken it upon himself at appropriate seasons to lecture Nan upon the error of her ways, and it never occurred to her, even now, to resent it. Instead, she answered him with unwonted meekness.
"I can't help it. Roger and I never see things in the same light, and--and oh, Sandy, you might try to understand!" she ended appealingly.
"I think I do," he returned. "But it isn't cricket, Nan. You can kick me out of the house if you like for saying it, but I don't think you ought to have Maryon Rooke around so much."
"He's painting my portrait," she protested.
"Taking a jolly long time over it, too--and making love to you in the intervals, I suppose."
"Well, isn't he?" Sandy's green eyes met hers unflinchingly.
"I should hope not," he observed drily, "seeing that you're going to be Mrs. Trenby."
"That wouldn't make an insuperable barrier, would it? I don't suppose--love--notices whether we're married or single when it comes along."
Something in the quality of her voice filled him with a sudden sense of fear. Hitherto he had attributed the trouble between Nan and Roger entirely to the difference in their temperaments. Now, for the first time, a new light was flashed upon the matter. Her tone was so sharply bitter, like that of one chafing against some actual happening, that his mind leaped to the possibility that there might be some more tangible force arrayed against Roger's happiness. And if this were the case, if Nan's love were really given elsewhere, then, knowing her as he did, Sandy foresaw the likelihood of some rash and headlong ending to it all.