Between them, Barry and Kitty and the two Fentons--who had joined the Mallow party for a short holiday--did their utmost to make the time that must still elapse before the wedding a little space of restfulness and peace, shielding Nan from every possible worry and annoyance. Even the question of trousseau was swept aside by Kitty of the high hand.
"Leave it to me. I'll see to it all," she proclaimed. "Good gracious, there's a post in the country, isn't there? Patterns can be sent and everything got under way, and finally Madame Véronique shall come down here for the fittings. So that's that!"
But in spite of Kitty's good offices, Nan was beginning to find the thorns in her path. Now that her health was more or less restored, Roger no longer exercised the same self-control. The postponing of the wedding-day to a date six weeks ahead roused him to an impatience he made no effort to conceal.
"But for your uncle's death and Kitty's prolonging your convalescence so absurdly, we should have been married by now," he told her one day with a thwarted note in his voice.
"Yes," she said. "We should have been married."
"Well"--his keen, grey eyes swept her face--"there'll be no further postponement. I shall marry you if the whole of your family chooses to die at the same moment. Even if you yourself were dying you should be my wife--_my wife_--first."
Roger's nature seemed to have undergone a curious change--an intensifying of his natural instincts, as it were. Those long hours of apprehension during which he had really believed that Nan had left him, followed by her illness, when death so nearly snatched her from him, had strengthened his desire for possession, rousing his love to fever heat and setting loose within him a corresponding jealousy.
Nan could not understand his attitude towards her in the very least. In the first instance he had yielded with a fairly good grace to Kitty's advice regarding the date of the wedding, but within a few days he had suddenly become restive and dissatisfied. Had Nan known it, an apparently careless remark of Isobel Carson's had sown the seed.
"It's curious that your marriage with Nan still seems to hang on the horizon, Roger," she had remarked reflectively. "It's always 'jam to-morrow,' isn't it? You'd better take care she doesn't give you the slip altogether!"--smilingly.