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. "_No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties_," he had told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them. She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "_Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder_." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing. She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own. Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it. Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did. She understood Roger's strange and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory--bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing--the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body. The doors of her soul--that innermost sanctuary of all--would never be opened for any other to enter in. But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.