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. Very often, since then, he would sit watching Nan with a sullen, brooding look in his eyes, and on occasion he seemed a prey to morose suspicion, when he would question her dictatorially as to what she had been doing since they had last met. At times he was roughly tender with her, abruptly passionate and demanding, and she grew to dread these moods even more than his outbreaks of temper. It was now more than ever impossible for her to respond, and only yesterday, when he had suddenly caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely yet feeling her lips lie stiff and unresponsive beneath his own, he had almost flung her from him. Then, gripping her by the arm until the delicate flesh showed red and bruised beneath the pressure, he had said savagely: "By God, Nan! I'll make you love me--or break you!" Nan turned back her sleeve and looked at the red weals now darkening into a bruise which his grasp had made on the white skin of her arm. Then she re-read the letter in her hand. It bore yesterday's date and was very brief. "I'm hoping to get out of town very soon now, and I propose to come down and inspect my new property with a view to re-decorating the house. I could never live with dear godfather's Early Victorian chairs and tables! So you may expect to see me almost any day now on the doorstep of Mallow Court. "Yours as always. "MARYON." Nan's first impulse was to beg him not to come. She had screwed up her courage to fulfil her pledge to marry Roger, and she felt that the presence in the neighbourhood of Maryon--Maryon with his familiar charm and attraction, and his former love for her intensified by losing her--might be a somewhat disturbing factor.