“Is that why you were angry--because I’ve come here? Lady Anne and--and Mr. Brennan seemed quite pleased,” she added as though in protest. “No doubt. Nick, lucky devil, has no need to economise in magic moments.” She felt her cheeks flush under the look he bent upon her, but she forced herself to meet it. “And--and you?” she questioned very low. “I have”--briefly. It was long before sleep visited Jean that night The events of the day marched processionally through her mind, and her thoughts persisted in clustering round the baffling, incomprehensible personality of Blaise Tormarin. His extreme bitterness of speech she ascribed to the unfortunate episode that lay in his past. But she could find no reason for his strange, expressed wish to disregard their former meeting at Montavan--to wipe out, as it were, all recollection of it. That he did not dislike her she felt sure; and a woman rarely makes a mistake over a man’s personal attitude towards her. But for some reason, it seemed to her, he was _afraid_ to let himself like her! It was as though he were anxious to bolt and bar the door against any possibility of friendship between them. From whichever way she looked at it, she could find no key to the mystery of his behaviour. It was inexplicable. Only one thing emerged from the confusion of thought; the lost glamour of that night at Montavan had returned--returned with fresh impulse and persuasiveness. And when at last she fell asleep, it was with the beseeching, soul-haunting melody of _Valse Triste_ crying in her ears. CHAPTER X--OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES JEAN woke to find the chill, wintry sunlight thrusting in long fingers through the space between the casements and the edges of the window-blinds. At first the unfamiliar look of a strange bedroom puzzled her, and she lay blinking drowsily at the wavering slits of light, wondering in vague, half-awake fashion where she was. Gradually, however, recollection returned to her, and with it a lively curiosity to view Staple by daylight. She jumped out of bed and, rattling up the blinds on their rollers, peered out of the window. There was a hard frost abroad, and the stillness which reigned over the ice-bound country-side reminded her of the big Alpine silences. But here there was no snow--no dazzling sheet of whiteness spread, with cold, grey-blue shadows flung across it Green and shaven the lawns sloped gently down from a flagged terrace, running immediately beneath her window, to the very rim of the frozen lake that gleamed in the valley below. Beyond the valley, scattered woods and copses climbed the hillside opposite, leafless and bare save where a cluster of tall pines towered in evergreen defiance against the slate of the sky.