"Did you know him?"

"By name only."

"Do Englishmen lend their clothes to promiscuous strangers?"

"More, much more; they give them at times."

She was silent for a few seconds. He had persuaded her that oars were preferable to sails on such a still night, especially as he was not acquainted with the shallows, but he had not explained that if he rowed and she steered he would be able to gaze his fill at her.

"What colors are those?" she demanded suddenly.

"I ought to have told you that I happened to find a member of the club to which I belong," he countered. Then, before she could pin him down to a definite statement, he tried to carry the war into the enemy's country.

"By the way, I hope I am not presuming on the fact that you have consented to take this little excursion, Miss Vanrenen, but may I ask how you contrive to appear each evening in a muslin frock? Those hold-alls on the motor are strictly utilitarian, and a mere man would imagine that muslin could not escape being crushed."

"It doesn't. I have a maid iron it for me before dinner. At Hereford I shall receive a fresh one from London, and send this back by post. But fancy you noticing such a thing! Have you any sisters?"

"Yes, one."

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-three."

"Dear me! A year older than me. Oh, ought I to have said 'than I'? That always puzzles me."

"You have Milton on your side. He wrote:

Satan—than whom no higher sat.

Still, it is generally allowed that Milton wrote bad grammar there."

Cynthia was awed momentarily—a quotation from "Paradise Lost" always commands respect—so she harked back to an easier topic.

"Is your sister married?"

"Yes."

"What is her husband?"

"She married rather well, as the saying is. Her husband is a man named Scarland, and he is chiefly interested in pedigree cattle."

"Let me see," she mused. "I seem to remember the name; it had something to do with fat cattle, too.... Scarland? Does he exhibit?"

Medenham wished then that he had not been so glib with the Marquis of Scarland's pet occupation.

"I have been in England so little during the past few years——" he began.

"I hope you haven't quarreled with your sister?" she put in promptly.

"What, quarrel with Betty? I?" And he laughed at the conceit, though he wondered what Cynthia would say if, on Monday, he deviated a few miles from the Hereford and Shrewsbury main road and showed her Scarland Towers and the park in which the marquis's prize stock were fattening.

"Oh, is she so nice? And pretty, too, I suppose?"

"People generally speak of her as good-looking. It is a recognized fact, I believe, that pretty girls usually have brothers not so favored——"

"What, fishing now as well as rowing? Didn't I say you had a Norman aspect?"

"Consisting largely of a scowl, I understand."

"But a man is bound to look fierce sometimes. At least, my father does, though he is celebrated for his unchanging aspect, no matter what happens. Perhaps he may look like a Sphinx when he is carrying through what he calls 'a deal,' but I remember very well seeing lightning in his eye when an Italian prince was rude to me one day. We were at Pompeii, and this Prince Monte-something induced me to look at a horrid fresco under the pretense that it was very artistic. Without thinking what I was doing, I ran to father and complained about it. My goodness! I wonder the lava didn't melt again before he got through with his highness, who, after all, was a bit of a virtuoso, and may have really admired nasty subjects so long as they conformed to certain standards of art."

"Some ideals call for correction by the toe of a strong boot—I share Mr. Vanrenen's views on that point most emphatically."

Medenham's character was one that transmuted words to deeds. He drove the skiff onward with a powerful sweep that discovered an unexpected shoal. There might have been some danger of an upset if the oars were in less skillful hands. As it was, they were back in deep water within a few seconds.

Cynthia laughed without the least tremor.

"You were kicking my Italian acquaintance in imagination then; I hope you see now that you might have been mistaken," she cried.

"Even in this instance I only touched mud."

"Well, well, let us forget the Signor Principe. Tell me about yourself. How did you come to enlist? In my country, men of your stamp do not join the army unless some national crisis arises. But, perhaps, that applies to your case. The Boers nearly beat you, didn't they?"

He took advantage of the opening thus presented, and was able to interest her in stories of the campaign without committing himself to details. Nevertheless, a man who had served on the headquarters staff during the protracted second phase of the South African war could hardly fail to exhibit an intimate knowledge of that history which is never written. Though Cynthia had met many leaders of thought and action, she had never before encountered one who had taken part in a struggle of such peculiar significance as the Boer revolt. She was not an English girl, eager only to hear tales of derring-do in which her fellow-countrymen figure heroically, but a citizen of that wider world that refuses to look at events exclusively through British spectacles; therein lay the germ of real peril to Medenham. He had not only to narrate but to convince. He was called on to answer questions of policy and method that few if any of the women in his own circle would think of putting. Obviously, this appeal to his intellect weakened the self-imposed guard on his lips. There is excellent authority for the belief that Desdemona loved Othello for the dangers he had passed, and did with greedy ear devour his discourse, yet it may well be conceded that an explanatory piquancy would have been added to the Moor's account

Of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field,

if the lady were not a maid of Venice but hailed from some kindred city that refused to range all the virtues on the side of the Mistress of the Adriatic.

More than once it chanced that Medenham had to exercise his wits very quickly to trip his tongue when on the verge of some indiscretion that would betray him. Perhaps he was unduly cautious. Perhaps his listener's heart had mastered her brain for the time. Perhaps she would not have woke up in a maze from a dream that was not less a dream because she was not sleeping even if some unwary utterance caused her to ask what manner of man this could be.

But that can never be known, since Cynthia herself never knew. The one sharp and clear fact that remained in her mind as a memory of a summer's evening passed in a boat on a river flowing through fairyland, was provided by a set of circumstances far removed from tales of stormy night-riding after De Wet or the warp and weft of European politics as they fashioned the cere-cloths of the two Dutch republics.

Neither the one nor the other should be blamed if they found a boat on the Wye a most pleasant exchange for an eager automobile on roads that tempted to high speed. At any rate, they gave no heed to the time until Cynthia happened to glance at the horizon and saw that the sun was represented by a thin seam of silver hemming the westerly fringe of a deep blue sky. If there was a moon, it was hidden by the hills.

"Whatever o'clock is it?" she cried in a voice that held almost a sound of scare.

Medenham looked at his watch, and had to hold it close to his eyes before he could make out the hour.

"Time you were back at the hotel," he said, swinging the boat round quickly. "I am afraid I have kept you out too long, Miss Vanrenen. It is a perfect night, but you must not risk catching a chill——"

"I'm not worrying about that sort of chill—there are others: what will Mrs. Devar think?"

"The worst," he could not help saying.

"What time is it, really?"

"Won't you be happier not to know? We have the stream with us now——"

"Mr. Fitzroy—what time is it?"

"Nearly half-past ten o'clock. You did not leave the hotel till after half-past eight."

"Oh, blame me, of course. 'The woman tempted me and I did eat.'"

"No, no. Apples are not the only forbidden fruit. May I vary an unworthy defense? The woman came with me and I didn't care."

"But I do care. Please hurry. Mrs. Devar will be real mad, and I shan't have a word to say for myself."

Medenham bent to it, and the outrigger traveled downstream at a rare pace. Cynthia steered with fair accuracy by the track they had followed against the current, but the oarsman glanced over his shoulder occasionally, and advised her as to the probable trend of the channel.

"Keep a bit wide here," he said when they were approaching a sharp bend. "I believe we almost touched ground in midstream as we came up."

She obeyed, and a wide expanse of low-lying land opened before her eyes.

"I don't see the lights of the hotel yet," she said, with a note of anxiety.

"You are not making enough allowance for the way in which this river turns and twists. There are sections in which you box the compass during the course of a short——"

A sharp tearing noise in the bottom of the boat amidships was followed by an inrush of water. Medenham sprang upright, leaped overboard, and caught the port outrigger with his left hand. He was then immersed to the waist, but he flung his right arm around Cynthia and lifted her clear of the sinking craft.

"Sit on my shoulder. Steady yourself with your hands on my head," he said, and his voice was so unemotional that the girl could almost have laughed. Beyond one startled "Oh!" when the plank was ripped out she had uttered no sound, and she followed his instructions now implicitly. She was perched comfortably well above the river when she felt that he was moving, not to either bank, but down the center of the stream. Suddenly he let go the boat, which had swung broadside on.

"It is sinking, and the weight was pulling me over," he explained, still in the same quiet way, as though he were stating the merest commonplace. Some thrill that she could not account for vibrated through her body. She was not frightened in the least. She had the most complete confidence in this man, whose head was braced against her left thigh, and whose arm was clasping her skirts closely round her ankles.

"Which side do you mean to make for?" she asked.

"I hardly know. You are higher up than me. Perhaps you can decide best as to the set of the current. The boat seems to have been carried to the right."



"Yes. I think the river shoals to the left."

"Suppose we try the other way first. The hotel is on that side."

"Anything you like."

He took a cautious step, then another. The water was rising. Luckily the current was not very strong or he could not have stood against it.

"No good," he said. "We must go back."

"Pity I'm not a circus lady. Then I might have balanced myself gracefully on the top of your head."

He murmured something indistinctly, but Cynthia fancied she caught the words:

"You're a dear, anyhow."

"What did you say?" she asked.

"It is high time we were out of here," he answered, turning his back to the pressure of water, which was very great in that place.

"What will happen if there are two channels, and we have pitched on a bank in the middle?"

"I must walk about a bit until I find the right track. The Wye is not very deep at this point. It must shelve rapidly in one direction or the other."

"But it mayn't."

"In that event I shall lower you into the water, ask you to hold tight to my coat collar with both hands, and let me swim. It is only a few yards."

"But I can swim, too."

"Not in a long dress.... Ah, here we are. I thought so."

In a couple of strides the water was below his knees. Soon he was standing on a pebbly beach at the nose of the promontory formed by the bend where the accident had happened. In order to lower Cynthia to the ground without bringing her muslin flounces in contact with his dripping clothes he had to stoop somewhat. Her hair brushed his forehead, his eyes, his lips, as he lifted her down. His hands rested for an instant on the warm softness of her neck and shoulders. His heart leaped in a mad riot of joy at the belief that she would have uttered no protest if he had drawn her nearer instead of setting her decorously on her feet. He dared not look at her, but turned and gazed at the river.

"Thank God, that is over!" he said.

Cynthia heard something in his voice then that was absent when they were both in peril of being swept away by the silent rush of the black stream.

"Quite an adventure," she sighed, stooping to feel the hem of her frock.

"You are not wet?" he asked, after a pause.

"Not a thread. The water barely touched my feet. How prompt you were! I suppose men who fight have often to decide quickly like that.... What caused it? A whole seam was torn open."

"It cannot be a stake. Such a thing would not be permitted to exist in this river.... A snag probably. Some old tree stump undermined by last month's heavy rain."

"What of the boat? Is it lost?"

"No. It will be found easily enough in the morning. The damage is trifling. How splendid you were!"

"Please don't. I haven't said a word to you, and I don't mean to."

"But——"

"Well, say it, if you must."

"I am not going to compliment you in the ordinary terms. Just this—nature intended you to be a soldier's bride, Miss Vanrenen."

"Nature, being feminine, may promise that which she does not always mean to carry out. Besides, I don't know many soldiers.... It is charming here, by the river's edge, but I must remember that you are soaked to the skin. Where are we, exactly?"

"About four miles from the hotel, by water: perhaps a mile and three-quarters as the crow flies."

"How far as a girl walks?"

"Let us try," he said briskly. "We seem to have landed in a meadow. If we cross it, all my efforts to save that muslin frock will count as naught, since there is sure to be a heavy dew on the grass after this fine day. Suppose we follow the bank a little way until we reach some sort of a path. Will you take my hand?"

"No, I need both hands to hold up my dress. But you might grab my arm. I am wearing French shoes, which are not built for clambering over rocks."

Cynthia was adroit. The use of one small word had relieved the situation. Medenham might hold her arm with the utmost tenderness, but so long as he was "grabbing" it there was nothing more to be said.

He piloted her to a narrow strip of turf that bordered the Wye, found a path that ran close to a small wood, and soon they were in a road. There was slight excuse for arm-holding now, but Cynthia seemed to think that her frills still needed safeguarding, so he did not withdraw the hand which clung to her elbow.

A light in a laborer's cottage promised information; he knocked at the door, which was not opened, but a voice cried:

"Who is it? What do you want?"

"Tell me the nearest way to the Symon's Yat Hotel, please," said Medenham.

"Keep straight on till you come to the ferry. If the boat is on this side you can pull yourself across."

"But if it is not?"

"You must chance it. The nearest bridge is a mile the other way."

"By gad!" said Medenham under his breath.

"I wouldn't care a pin if Mrs. Devar wasn't waiting for me," whispered Cynthia, whose mental attitude during this mishap on the Wye contrasted strangely with her alarm when Marigny's motor collapsed on the Mendips.

"Mrs. Devar is the real problem," laughed Medenham. "We must find some means of soothing her agitation."

"Why don't you like her?"

"That is one of the things I wish to explain later."

"She has been horrid to you, I know, but——"

"I am beginning to think that I owe her a debt of gratitude I can never repay."

"What will happen if that wretched ferryboat is on the wrong side of the river?"

Medenham took her arm again, for the road was dark where there were trees.

"You are not to think about it," he said. "I have been doing all the talking to-night. Now tell me something of your wanderings abroad."

These two already understood each other without the spoken word. He respected her desire to sheer off anything that might be construed as establishing a new relationship between them, and she appreciated his restraint to the full. They discussed foreign lands and peoples until the road bent toward the river again and the ferry was reached—at a point quite half a mile below the hotel.

And there was no boat!

A wire rope drooped into the darkness of the opposite bank, but no voice answered Medenham's hail. Cynthia said not a syllable until her companion handed her his watch with a request that she should hold it.

"You are not going into that river," she cried determinedly.

"There is not the slightest risk," he said.

"But there is. What if you were seized with cramp?"

"I shall cling to the rope, if that will satisfy you. I have swum the Zambesi before to-day, not from choice, I admit, and it is twenty times the width of the Wye, while it holds more crocodiles than the Wye holds salmon."

"Well—if you promise about the rope."

Soon he was out of sight, and her heart knew its first pang of fear. Then she heard his cry of "Got the boat," followed by the clank of a sculling oar and the creak of the guiding-wheel on the hawser.

At last, shortly before midnight, they neared the hotel. Lights were visible on the quay, and Medenham read their meaning.

"They are sending out a search party," he said. "I must go and stop them. You run on to the hotel, Miss Vanrenen. Good-night! I shall give you an extra hour to-morrow."

She hesitated the fraction of a second. Then she extended a hand.

"Good-night," she murmured. "After all, I have had a real lovely time."

Then she was gone, and Medenham turned to thank the hotel servants and others who were going to the rescue.

"I wonder what the guv'nor will say when he sees Cynthia," he thought, with the smile on his face of the lover who deems his lady peerless among her sex. He recalled that moment before many days had passed, and his reflections then took a new guise, for not all the knowledge and all the experience a man may gather can avail him a whit to forecast the future when Fate is spinning her complex web.



CHAPTER X

THE HIDDEN FOUNTS OF EVIL

It was a flushed and somewhat breathless Cynthia who ran into the quiet country hotel at an hour when the Licensing Laws of Britain have ordained that quiet country hotels shall be closed. But even the laws of the Medes and Persians, which altered not, must have bulged a little at times under the pressure of circumstances. The daughter of an American millionaire could not be reported as "missing" without a buzz of commotion being aroused in that secluded valley. As a matter of fact, no one in the house dreamed of going to bed until her disappearance was accounted for, one way or the other.

Mrs. Devar, now really woebegone, screamed shrilly at sight of her. The lady's nerves were in a parlous condition—"on a raw edge" was her own phrase—and the relief of seeing her errant charge again was so great that the shriek merged into a sob.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she wept, "what a shock you have given me! I thought you were gone!"

"Not so bad as that," was the contrite answer. Cynthia interpreted "gone" as meaning "dead," and naturally read into the other woman's anxiety her own knowledge of the disaster to the boat. "We had a bit of an upset—that is all—and the bread always flops to the floor buttered side down, doesn't it? So we had to struggle ashore on the wrong bank. It couldn't be helped—that is, the accident couldn't—but I ought not to have been on the river at such a late hour. Do forgive me, dear Mrs. Devar!"

By this time the girl's left arm was around her friend's portly form; in her intense eagerness to assuage Mrs. Devar's agitation she began to stroke her hair with the disengaged hand. A deeply sympathetic landlady, a number of servants, and most of the feminine guests in the hotel—all the men were down on the quay—had gathered to murmur their congratulations; but Mrs. Devar, dismayed by Cynthia's action, which might have brought about a catastrophe, revived with phenomenal suddenness.

"My dear child," she cried, extricating herself from the encircling arm, "do let me look at you! I want to make sure that you are not injured. The boat upset, you say. Why, your clothes must be wringing wet!"

Cynthia laughed. She had guessed why her chaperon wished to keep her literally at arm's length. She spread her skirts with a quick gesture that relieved an awkward situation.

"Not a drop on my clothes," she said gleefully. "The water just touched the soles of my boots, but before you could say 'Jack Robinson' Fitzroy had whisked me out of the skiff—and landed me on dry land."

"You were in shallow water, then?" put in the smiling proprietress.

"Oh no, fairly deep. Fitzroy was up to his waist in the stream."

"And the boat upset?" came the amazed chorus.

"I didn't quite mean that. What actually happened was this. I discovered that the hour was rather late, and Fitzroy was rowing down stream at a great pace when some sunken thing, a tree-root he thinks, caught the side of the boat and started a plank. I was so taken by surprise that I should have sat right there and gone to the bottom with the boat, but Fitzroy jumped overboard straight away and hiked me out."

Ready-tongued Cynthia was beginning to find detailed explanation rather difficult, and her speech reverted to the picturesque idioms of her native land. It was the happiest ruse she could have adopted. Everyone laughed at the notion of being "hiked out." None of her hearers knew quite what it meant, yet it covered the requisite ground, which was more than might have been achieved by explicit English.

"Where did the accident take place?" asked the landlady.

Cynthia was vague on this point, but when she told how the return journey was made, the pretty Welsh waitress hit on a theory.

"In-deed to goot-ness, miss," she cried, "you wass be-tween the Garren River an' Huntsham Bridge. It iss a bad place, so it iss, however. Me an' my young man wass shoaled there once, we wass."

Cynthia felt that her face and neck had grown positively scarlet, and she could have kissed the well-disposed landlady for entering on a voluble disquisition as to the tricks played by the Wye on those unaware of its peculiarities, especially at night. A general conversation broke out, but Mrs. Devar, rapidly regaining her spirits after enduring long hours of the horrible obsession that Medenham had run off with her heiress, noted that telltale blush. At present her object was to assist rather than embarrass, so with a fine air of motherly solicitude she asked:

"Where did you leave Fitzroy?"

"He saw preparations being made to send boats in search of us, and he went to stop them. Oh, here he is!"

Medenham entered, and the impulsive Mrs. Devar ran to meet him. Though he had been in the river again only five minutes earlier, the walk up a dust-laden path had covered his sopping boots with mud, and in the not very powerful light of the hall, where a score or more of anxious people were collected, it was difficult to notice that his clothes were wet. But "Wiggy" Devar did not care now whether or not the story told by Cynthia was true. With reaction from the nightmare that had possessed her since ten o'clock came a sharp appreciation of the extraordinarily favorable turn taken by events so far as she was concerned. If a French count were to be supplanted by an English viscount, what better opportunity of approving the change could present itself?

"Mr. Fitzroy," she said in her shrill voice, "I can never thank you sufficiently for the courage and resource you displayed in rescuing Miss Vanrenen. You have acted most nobly. I am only saying now what Mr. Vanrenen will say when his daughter and I tell him of your magnificent behavior."

He reddened and tried to smile, though wishing most heartily that these heroics, if unavoidable, had been kept for some other time and place. He could not believe that Cynthia had exalted a not very serious incident into a "rescue," yet she might be vexed if he cheapened his own services. In any event, it was doubtful whether she would wish her father to hear of the escapade until she told him herself at the close of the tour.

"I am sure Miss Vanrenen felt safe while in my care," was all he dared to say, but Cynthia promptly understood his perplexity and came to his aid.

"Mrs. Devar thinks far more of our adventure than we do," she broke in. "Our chief difficulty lay in finding the road. The only time I felt worried was when you crossed the river to retrieve the ferryboat. But surely I have caused enough excitement for to-night. You ought to take some hot lemonade and go to bed."

A man who had walked up the hill from the boathouse with Medenham laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Come along, old chap!" he cried. "You certainly want a hot draught of some sort, and you must not hang about in those wet clothes."

"Yes," purred Mrs. Devar, "don't run the risk of catching cold, Fitzroy. It would spoil everything if you were laid up."

Her gracious manner almost deceived Medenham. During his years of wandering he had come across unexpected good qualities in men from whom he looked for naught but evil—was it the same with women? He hoped so. Perhaps this scheming marriage-broker had shed her worldly scales under the stress of emotion.

"You need have no fear that the car will not be waiting for you in the morning, Mrs. Devar," he said, smiling frankly into her steel-gray eyes. "Did you say half-past nine, Miss Vanrenen?" he asked, turning to snatch one last look at Cynthia.

"Yes. Good-night—and thank you."

She offered her hand to him before them all. The touch of her cool fingers was infinitely sweet, but when he strove to surprise some hint of her thought in those twin pools of limpid light that were wont to gaze at him so fearlessly he failed, for all the daring had fled from Cynthia, and he knew—how Heaven and lovers alone can tell—that her heart was beating with a fright she had not felt when he staggered under the relentless pressure of the river while holding her in his arms.

To the lookers-on the girl's outstretched hand was a token of gratitude; to Medenham it carried an acknowledgment of that equality which should reign between those who love. His head swam in a sudden vertigo of delight, and he hurried away without uttering a word. There were some, perhaps, who wondered; others who saw in his brusqueness nothing more than the confusion of an inferior overwhelmed by the kindly condescension of a young and charming mistress; but the one who did fully and truly interpret the secret springs of his action went suddenly white to the lips, and her voice was curiously low and strained as she turned to Mrs. Devar.

"Come, dear," she murmured, "I am tired, it would seem; and you, you must be quite worn out with anxiety."

"My darling child," gushed Mrs. Devar, "I should have been nearly dead if I had not known that Fitzroy was with you, but he is one of those men who inspire confidence. I refused to admit even to myself that anything of evil consequence could happen to you while he was present. How fortunate we were that day in town——"

The man who had suggested that the hotel pharmacist could dispense hot drinks other than lemonade nudged an acquaintance.

"Our chauffeur friend has a rippin' nice job," he whispered. "Wouldn't mind taking his billet myself—it 'ud be a change from everlastin' goff. Hello! Where is he? I meant to——"

Medenham had gone, striding away up the hillside in a very frenzy of happiness. Four days, and Cynthia as good as won! Was it possible, then, that the disguised prince of the fairytale could be a reality—that such romances might still be found in this gray old world? Four days! He could not be deeper in love with Cynthia had he known her four years, or forty, and he was certain now that he had really loved her before he had been in her company four minutes.

But these rhapsodies were cut short by his arrival at the hotel garage, with the displeasing discovery that no one named Dale had reached Symon's Yat that evening, while the stolid fact stared him in the face that his cherished Mercury demanded several hours of hard-working attentions if it were to glisten and hum in its usual perfection next morning.

"Queer thing," he said, thinking aloud rather than addressing the stableman who had given this disconcerting news. "I have never before known him fail; and I wired to Hereford early enough."

"Oh, he's in Hereford, is he?" inquired the man.

"He ought not to be, but he is, I fear."

"Then it'll be him who axed for ye on the telephone?"

"When?"

"It 'ud be somewheres about a quarter or half past eight. Lizzie tole me after the old leddy kem up to see if you'd taken the car out."

Medenham's wits were alert enough now.

"I don't fully understand," he said. "What old lady, and why did she come?"

"That's wot bothered me," was the reply. "Everybody knew that the young leddy an' you were on the Wye: 'deed to goodness, some of us thought you were in it. Anyways, it was long after ten when she——"

"You mean Mrs. Devar, I suppose—the older lady of the two who arrived in my car?"

"Yes, that's her. She wanted to be sure the car wasn't gone, and nothing would suit her but the key must be brought from the orfis an' the coach-house door unlocked so's she could see it with her own eyes. Well, Lizzie sez to me, 'That's funny, it is, because she watched they two goin' on the river, and was in the box a long time telephonin' to a shuffer called Dale, at Hereford.' Thinks I, 'It's funnier that the shuffer who's here should be expectin' a chap named Dale,' but I said nothink. I never does to wimmen. Lord luv yer, they'll twist a tale twenty ways for Sundays to suit their own pupposes afterwards."

Lightning struck from a cloudless sky a second time that night at Symon's Yat, and in its gleam was revealed the duplicity of Mrs. Devar. Medenham could not guess the double significance of Dale's message and failure to appear, but he was under no delusion now as to the cause of those honeyed words. Dale had been indiscreet, had probably blurted out his employer's title, and Mrs. Devar knew at last who the chauffeur was whose interference had baffled her plans.

He laughed bitterly, but did not pursue the inquiry any further.

"Can you clean coachwork and brass?" he asked, stooping to unlock the toolbox.

The stableman shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other. The hour was past midnight, and the alarm raised at the hotel had already robbed him of two hours' sleep.

"Hosses is more in my line," he answered gruffly.

"But if I give you half a sovereign perhaps you will not mind helping me. I shall attend to the engine myself."

"'Arf a suv-rin did you say, mister?" came the panting question.

"Yes. Be quick! Off with your coat, and get busy. A man who can groom a horse properly ought to be able to use a rubber and hose."

By two o'clock the Mercury was shining above and below. Thoroughly weary, yet well satisfied with the day's record, Medenham went to bed. He was up at seven, and meant to talk severely to Dale after breakfast; then he found, by consulting a directory, that the small hotel where his man had arranged to stay did not possess a telephone. It was annoying, but he had the consolation of knowing that an hour's slow run would bring him to Hereford and reunite him with his sorely-needed baggage. He was giving a few finishing touches to the car's toilette, when the Welsh waiting-maid hurried to the garage; Miss Vanrenen wanted him at once.

She awaited him in the veranda of the hotel, which fronted the southeast. A shower of June roses, pink and crimson and white, bespangled the sloping roof and hid the square posts that supported it, and a flood of vivid sunshine irradiated Cynthia as she leaned over the low rail of the balcony and smiled a greeting. She presented a picture that was a triumph of unconscious art, and her beauty affected Medenham more than a deep draught of the strongest wine ever vinted by man. Yesterday she was a charming girl, radiantly good-looking, and likely to attract attention even in circles where pretty women were plentiful as blackberries in a September thicket, but to-day, in Medenham's eyes, she was a woodland sprite, an ethereal creature cast in no mortal mold. So enthralled was he by the vision that he failed to note her attire. She wore the muslin dress of the previous night, and this, in itself, might have prepared him for what was to come.

"Good-morning, Mr. Fitzroy," she said, with a fine attempt at re-establishing those friendly relations which might reasonably exist between the owner of a motor-car and its hirer, "how are you after your strenuous labors of yesterday? I have heard all about you. Fancy remaining out of bed till two o'clock! Couldn't that precious car of yours be cleaned this morning, and by someone else?"

He found his tongue at that.

"Mercury obeys none but Jupiter," he said.

Her eyes met his fairly, and she laughed.

"That is the first conceited thing I have heard you say," she cried, "and, by Jove, aren't you flying high?"

"Jupiter assumed disguises," he reminded her. "Once, when he peered into an Olympian grove, he saw Io, and took the form of a youth so that he might talk with her. He found her so lovable that he passed many a pleasant hour in her company wandering on the banks of the classic stream that flowed through the wood, and in those hours he was not Jupiter but a boy, a boy very much in love. Every man has, or ought to have, something of Jupiter, a good deal of the boy, in his make-up."

He turned and looked at the Wye and its tree-shaded banks. Then he faced Cynthia again, and his hands rested on the barrier that divided them. For one mad instant he thought of vaulting it, and Cynthia read his thought; she drew back in a panic. A less infatuated wooer than Medenham might have noted that she seemed to fear interruption more than any too impulsive action on his part.

"I sent for you to tell you that Mrs. Devar is ill," she said in a flurry of words. "I am afraid she suffered more from the fright than I imagined last night. Anyhow, she has asked me to let her remain here to-day. You won't mind, I am sure, though it must be a bother not to have your luggage. Can't you run in to Hereford and get it? I am quite content to rest in this pretty place and write letters."

"I do honestly believe that Mrs. Devar is more frightened than ill," he said.

"Oh, she isn't making a fuss about it. Indeed, she was willing to go to Hereford this afternoon if I particularly wanted to attend service at the cathedral. I did, as a matter of fact, but it would be real mean to insist on it after scaring the poor thing into a nervous headache."

"The affair arranges itself admirably," he said. "At most cathedrals there is an anthem, followed by a sermon by some eminent preacher, about three o'clock. Write your letters this morning, or, better still, climb to the top of the Yat and see the glorious view from the top. Come back for lunch at one, and——"

"I'll see what Mrs. Devar thinks of it," broke in Cynthia, whose cheeks were borrowing tints from the red roses and the white with astonishing fluctuations of color. She ran off, more like Io, the sylph, than ever, and Medenham stood there in a brown study.

"This sort of thing can't go on," he argued with himself. "At any minute now I shall be taking her in my arms and kissing her, and that will not be fair to Cynthia, who is proud and queenly, and who will strive against the dictates of her own heart because it is not seemly that she should wed her father's paid servant. So I must tell her, to-day—perhaps during the run home from Hereford, perhaps to-night. But, dash it all! that will break up our tour. One ought to consider the world we live in; Cynthia will be one of its leaders, and it will never do to have people saying that Viscount Medenham became engaged to Cynthia Vanrenen while acting as the lady's chauffeur during a thousand-mile run through the West of England and Wales. Now, what am I to do?"

The answer came from a bedroom window that overlooked the veranda.

"Mr. Fitzroy!"

He knew as he looked up that Cynthia dared not face him again, for her voice was too exquisitely subtle in its modulations not to betray its owner's disappointment before she uttered another word.

"I am very sorry," she said rapidly, "but I feel I ought not to leave Mrs. Devar until she is better, so I mean to remain indoors all day. I shall not require the car before nine o'clock to-morrow. If you like to visit Hereford, go at any time that suits your convenience."

She seemed to regret the curtness of her speech, though indeed she was raging inwardly because of certain barbed shafts planted in her breast by Mrs. Devar's faint protests, and tried to mitigate the blow she had inflicted by adding, with a valiant smile:

"For this occasion only, Jupiter must content himself with Mercury as a companion."

"If I had Jove's power——" he began wrathfully.

"If you were Cynthia Vanrenen, you would do exactly what she is doing," she cried, and fled from the window.

It is not to be denied that he extracted some cold comfort from that last cryptic remark. Cynthia wanted to come, but Mrs. Devar had evidently burked the excursion. Why? Because Cynthia's escort would be Viscount Medenham and not Arthur Simmonds, orthodox and highly respectable chauffeur. But Mrs. Devar plainly declared herself on the side of Viscount Medenham last night. Why, then, did she stop a short journey by motor, with the laudable objective of hearing an anthem and a sermon in a cathedral, when overnight she permitted the far less defensible trip on the river with the hated Fitzroy? It needed no great penetration to solve this puzzle. Mrs. Devar was afraid of some development that might happen if the girl visited Hereford that day. She counted on Medenham being chained to Symon's Yat while Cynthia was there—consequently she had heard something from Dale that rendered it eminently necessary that neither he nor Cynthia should be seen in Hereford on the Sunday. Probably, too, she did not anticipate that Cynthia would don the haircloth of self-discipline and avoid him during the whole of the day, since that was what the girl meant by her allusion to Monday's starting-time.

Perhaps, using a woman's privilege, she might change her mind towards sunset; meanwhile, it behooved him to visit Hereford and pry into things there.

Nevertheless, he was a wise lover. Cynthia might dismiss him graciously to follow his own behests, but it might not please her if she discovered that he had taken her permission too literally. He entered the hotel and wrote a letter:

"My dear Miss Vanrenen——" no pretense of "Madam" or other social formula, but a plain and large "My dear," with the name appended as a concession to the humbug of life, even in regard to the woman he loved—"I am going to Hereford, but shall return here for luncheon. Mrs. Devar's illness is not likely to be lasting, and the view from the Yat is, if possible, better in the afternoon than in the morning. In addition to my obvious need of a clean collar, I believe that our presence in Hereford to-day is not desired. Why? I shall make it my business to find out. Yours ever sincerely——"

Then he reached a high and stout stone wall of difficulty. Was he to fall back on the subterfuge of "George Augustus Fitzroy," which, of course, was his proper signature in law? He disliked this veil of concealment more and more each instant, but it was manifestly out of the question that he should sign himself "Medenham," or "George," while he had fought several pitched battles at Harrow with classmates who pined to label him "Augustus," abbreviated. So, greatly daring, he wrote: "Mercury's Guv'nor," trusting to luck whether or not Cynthia's classical lore would remind her that Mercury was the son of Jupiter.

He reread this effusion twice, and was satisfied with it as the herald of others. "My dear" sounded well; the intimacy of "our presence" was not overdone; while "yours ever sincerely" was excellent. He wondered if Cynthia would analyze it word for word in that fashion. Well, some day he might ask her. For the present he sealed the letter with a sigh and gave it to a waiter for safe delivery; he fancied, but could not be quite sure, that a good deal of unnecessary play with the motor's Gabriel horn five minutes later brought a slender muslined figure to a window of the then distant hotel.

From Symon's Yat to Hereford is about fifteen miles, and Medenham drew out of the narrow lane leading from the river to Whitchurch about a quarter-past nine. Thenceforth a straight and good road lay clear before him, and he meant to break the law as to speed limit by traveling at the fastest rate compatible with his own safety and that of other road-users. It was no disgrace to the Mercury car, therefore, when a dull report and a sudden effort of the steering-wheel to swerve to the right betokened the collapse of an inner tube on the off side. From the motorist's point of view it was difficult to understand the cause of the mishap. The whole four tires were new so recently as the previous Monday, and Medenham was far too deeply absorbed in his own affairs to grasp the essential fact that Fate was still taking an intelligent interest in him.

Of course, he did not hurry over the work as though his life depended on it. Even when the cover was replaced and the tire pumped to the proper degree of air-pressure he lit a cigarette and had a look at the magneto before restarting the engine. Two small boys had appeared from space, and he amused himself by asking them to reckon how long it would take two men to mow a field of grass which one of the men could mow in three days and the other in four. He promised a reward of sixpence if the correct answer were forthcoming in a minute, and raised it to a shilling during the next minute. This stimulated their wits to suggest "a day and three-quarters" instead of the first frantic effort of "three days and a half."

"No," said he. "Think it over, ponder it with ardor, and if you have the right answer ready when I pass this way again about midday I'll give you a shilling each."

There is no saying what sum he would have given those urchins if some magician had spoken by their mouths and bade him hasten to Hereford with all the zest of all the horses pent beneath the Mercury's bonnet. But he left the boys ciphering on a gate with a bit of lead pencil which he lent them, and pulled up at the door of the Green Dragon Hotel in Hereford just five minutes after the Sunday morning express to London had snatched a fuming and indignant Earl of Fairholme from off the platform of the Great Western railway station.

"Whose car?" inquired a hall-porter.

"Mine," said Medenham, rather surprised by the question.

"Sorry, sir. I thought you might be the party Lord Fairholme was expecting."

"Did you say 'Lord Fairholme'?"

Medenham spoke with the slow accents of sheer astonishment, and the man hastened to explain.

"Yes, sir. His lordship has been a-damnin' everybody since two o'clock yesterday afternoon because a Miss Vanrenen, who had ordered rooms here, didn't turn up. She's on a motor tour through England, so I thought——"

"You have made no mistake. But are you quite sure that the Earl of Fairholme asked for Miss Vanrenen?"

"Not exactly that, sir, but he seemed to be uncommon vexed when we could give him no news of her."

"Where is his lordship now?"

"Gone to London, sir, by the 10.5. He damned me for the last time half an hour ago."

"Oh, did he?"

Medenham glanced at his watch, twisted himself free of the wheel, leaped to the pavement, and tapped one of the hall-porter's gold epaulettes impressively.

"I am forced to believe that you are speaking the truth," he said. "Now, tell me all about it, there's a good fellow. I am a bit rattled, because, don't you see, Lord Fairholme is my father, and he is the last man on earth whom I would have expected to meet in Hereford to-day. During the less exciting intervals in his speech did you find out why he came here?"

"Perhaps the manageress may be able to tell you something, sir. Beg pardon, but may I ask your name?"

"Medenham."

The man tickled the back of his ear in doubt, since he was aware that an Earl's son usually has a courtesy title.

"Lord Medenham?" he hazarded.

"Viscount."

"I thought, perhaps, you might have been a gentleman named Fitzroy, my lord," he said.

"Well, I am that, too. If you feel that I ought to be presented to the manageress in state, kindly announce me as George Augustus Fitzroy, Viscount Medenham, of Medenham Hall, Downshire, and 91 Cavendish Square, London."

The hall-porter's eyes twinkled.

"I didn't mean that, my lord, but there's a chauffeur, name of Dale——"

"Ah, what of him?"

"He knows all about it, my lord, and he's hiding in a hayloft down the stable yard at this minnit, because your lordship's father threatened to give him in charge for stealing a couple of your portmanteaux."

"Tell me he thieved successfully and I shall fork out handsomely."

The man grinned. He was shrewd enough to realize that, no matter what mystery lay behind all this, the aid of the police would not be requisitioned.

"I believe——" he began. Then he made off, with a cry of "Wait just a few seconds, my lord. I'll bring Dale."

And Dale appeared, picking bits of hay off his uniform, and striving vainly to compose his features into their customary expression of a stolid alertness that hears nothing but his master's orders, sees nothing that does not concern his duties. He gave one sharp glance at the car, and his face grew chauffeurish, but the look of hang-dog despair returned when he met Medenham's eyes.

"I couldn't get away to save me life, my lord," he grumbled. "It was a fair cop at Bristol, an' no mistake. His lordship swooped down on me an' Simmonds at the station, so wot could I do?"

Medenham laughed.

"I don't blame you, Dale. You could not have been more nonplussed than I at this moment. Will you kindly remember that I know nothing whatever of the Earl's appearance either at Bristol or Hereford——"

"Gord's trewth! Didn't they tell you I telephoned, my lord?"

Dale would not have spoken in that fashion were he not quite woebegone and down-hearted; and not without reason, for the Earl had dismissed him with contumely not once but a dozen times. Medenham saw that his retainer would be more muddled than ever if he realized that Mrs. Devar had intercepted the telephone message, so he slurred over that element of the affair, and Dale quickly enlightened him as to the course taken by events after the departure of the Mercury's tourists from Bristol.

The Earl, too, had referred to Lady St. Maur's correspondent at Bournemouth, and Medenham could fill in blanks in the story quite easily, but the allusions to Marigny were less comprehensible.

Dale's distress arose chiefly from the Earl's vows of vengeance when he discovered that his son's baggage had been spirited away during the breakfast hour that morning, but Medenham reassured him.

"Don't bother your head about that," he said. "I'll telegraph and write to my father a full explanation to-day. You have obeyed my orders, and he must blame me, not you, if they ran counter to his. Take charge of the car while I change my clothes and make a few inquiries. To save any further mix-up, you had better come with me to Symon's Yat."

Within five minutes he ascertained that Count Edouard Marigny had occupied a room in the Mitre Hotel, just across the street, since the previous afternoon. More than that, the Frenchman was traveling to London by the same train as the Earl. Then Medenham felt really angry. It was inconceivable that his father should have allowed himself to be drawn into a pitiful intrigue by such doubtful agents as Marigny and the Countess of Porthcawl.

"I'll write," he vowed, "and in pretty stiff terms, too, but I'm jiggered if I'll wire. The old chap should have shown more confidence in me. Why on earth didn't he announce his visit to Bristol? Jolly good job he left Hereford to-day before I arrived—there might have been ructions. Good Lord! He evidently takes Cynthia for an adventuress!"

Yet, in spite of the chance of ructions, it would have been far better had Medenham not missed his father that morning. He was too dutiful a son, the Earl was too fair-minded a parent, that they should not be able to meet and discuss matters without heat. By noon they would have reached Symon's Yat; before lunch was ended the older man would have been Cynthia's most outspoken admirer. As it was—well, as it was—there used to be a belief in the Middle Ages that the Evil One's favorite nook lay amid the deepest shadow of a cathedral, and modern fact is ofttimes curiously akin to medieval romance.



CHAPTER XI

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

When he came to think of it, Medenham decided to return at once to Symon's Yat. It was advisable, however, to inform the proprietor of the hotel that the Earl's denunciation of Dale as a pilferer of luggage was based on a complete misunderstanding of the facts. With that object in view he entered the office; another surprise awaited him there.

A lady bookkeeper, casting an appraising eye over his motoring garments, asked instantly:

"Are you Mr. Fitzroy, driver of a Mercury car, Number X L 4000?"

"Yes," said he, prepared now to see his name and description blazoned across the west front of the cathedral.

"You are wanted on the telephone. Miss Vanrenen wishes you to ring her up."

After a soul-chastening delay he heard Cynthia's voice:

"That you, Mr. Fitzroy?"

"Yes."

"I'm so glad I caught you before you hurried away again.... Er—that is—I suppose you traveled rather fast, you and Mercury?"

He laughed. That was all. He did not intend to let her assume so readily that he had missed the first thought which bubbled forth in words. She well knew that he was not in Hereford from personal choice, but she had not meant to tell him that she knew.

"What are you sniggering at?" she demanded imperiously.

"Only at your divination," he answered. "Indeed, if a tire had not given out soon after I left Whitchurch I would now be well on my way to the Yat."

Suddenly he recollected the singular outcome of the incident. There was some reasonable probability that it might exercise a material effect on the course of events during the next few days.

So, after a little pause, he added: "That is one reason; there are others."

"Is something detaining you, then?" she asked.

"Yes, a trivial matter, but I shall be at the hotel long before lunch."

"Mrs. Devar is much better.... She is so sorry I remained indoors this morning."

"Mrs. Devar is cultivating angelic qualities," he said, but he murmured under his breath: "The old cat finds now that she has made a mistake."

"I want you to pay the hotel people for the rooms I reserved but have not occupied. Then, perhaps, they will hand you any mail that may have been sent after me. And please give them my address at Chester. Will you do all that?"

"Certainly. There should be no difficulty."

"Is Hereford looking very lively?"

"It strikes me as peculiarly empty," he said with convincing candor.

"Shall we have time to see all the show places to-morrow?"

"We shall make time."

"Well, good-bye! Bring my letters. I have not heard from my father since we left Bournemouth."

"Ah, there I have the better of you. I heard of, if not from, my revered dad since reaching Hereford."

"Unexpectedly?"

"Oh, quite."

"Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"The old gentleman's temper seems to be a trifle out of gear; the present attack is not serious; he will survive it—for many years, I trust."

"You must not be flippant where your father is concerned. I believe he is annoyed because you came away with me, and so failed to keep the appointment fixed for Saturday in London. Eh? What did you say?"

"I said 'Well, I am surprised,' or words to that effect. As my name is George I cannot tell a lie, so I must admit regretfully that you have guessed right. Indeed, Miss Vanrenen, I may go so far as to suggest, by letter, that before my father condemns me he should first meet you. Of course, I shall warn him that you are irresistible."

"Good-by again," said Cynthia severely. "You can tell me all about it after—oh, some time to-day, anyhow."

The Green Dragon proved to be most undragonish. No manner of doubt was cast on Medenham's good faith; he pocketed half a dozen letters for Cynthia, and one, unstamped, bearing the crest of the Mitre, for Mrs. Devar. By the merest chance he caught sight of a note, addressed "Viscount Medenham," stuck in a rack among some telegrams. The handwriting was his father's. But how secure it without arousing quite reasonable suspicion? He tried the bold course.

"I may as well take that, too," he said offhandedly.

"Is Viscount Medenham also in your party?" inquired the bookkeeper.

"Yes."

Again no demur was raised, since the Earl's repeated demands for information as to Miss Vanrenen's whereabouts showed that some sort of link must exist between him and the missing tourists.

Medenham sat in his car outside and read:

MY DEAR GEORGE—If this reaches you, please oblige me by returning to town at once. Your aunt is making a devil of a fuss, and is most unpleasant. I say no more now, since I am not sure that you will be in Hereford before we meet.

Yours ever, F.

"I can see myself being very angry with Aunt Susan," he growled in the first flush of resentment against the unfairness of her attitude.

But that phase soon passed. His mind dwelt rather on Lady St. Maur's bland amazement when she encountered Cynthia. He could estimate with some degree of precision her ladyship's views regarding the eighty millions of citizens of the United States; had she not said in his hearing that "American society was evidently quite English—but with the head cut off?"

That, and a sarcastic computation as to the difference between Ten Thousand and Four Hundred, constituted her knowledge of America. Still, he made excuses for her. It was no new thing for an aristocracy to be narrow-minded. Horace, that fine gentleman, "hated the vulgar crowd," and Nicolo Machiavelli, fifteen centuries later, denounced the nobles of Florence for their "easy-going contempt of everything and everybody"; so Lady St. Maur had plenty of historical precedent for the coining of cheap epigrams.

The one person Medenham was really bitter against was Millicent Porthcawl. She had met Cynthia; she herself must have frowned at the lying innuendoes written from Bournemouth; it would give him some satisfaction to tell Cynthia that the Porthcawl menage ought not to figure on her visiting list. But there! Cynthia was too generous-minded even to avenge her wrongs, though well able to deal with the Millicents and Mauds and Susans if they dared be spiteful.

Then the coming of Dale with various leather bags roused him from the reverie induced by his father's curt missive, and he laughed at the discovery that he was fighting Cynthia's battles already.

The Mercury was raising a good deal of dust in the neighborhood of Whitchurch when its occupants noticed a pair of urchins perched on a gate, signaling frantically. It pleased Medenham to mystify Dale, who was, if possible, more taciturn than ever since those heart-searching experiences at Gloucester and Hereford.

He pulled up some fifty yards or more down the road.

"You saw those boys?" he said.

"Yes, my lord, but they're only having a game."

"Nothing of the sort. Skip along and ask them if they have found out the answer. If they say 'a day and five-sevenths,' hand them a shilling each. Any other reply will be wrong. Don't talk. Just run there and back, and pay only on a day and five-sevenths."

Dale ran. Soon he was in his seat again.

"I gev' 'em a bob each, my lord," he announced, grave as an owl.

While they were running slowly down the winding lane that led to the Yat Medenham determined to make sure of his ground with reference to Mrs. Devar.

"I suppose you left no room for doubt as to my identity in the mind of the lady to whom you spoke over the telephone last night?" he inquired.

"None whatever, my lord. She wormed it out of me."

"Did you mention the Earl?"

"Like an ijjit, I began by giving his lordship's name. It was my only chanst, I couldn't get to the post-office nohow. Why, I was ordered to bed at eight o'clock, so's his lordship could smoke in peace, as he said."

"Then my father was determined to stop you from communicating with me, if possible?"

"If his lordship knew that I crep' down a back stairs to the telephone I do believe he'd have set about me with a poker," said Dale grimly.

"Strange!" mused Medenham, with eyes now more intent on the hotel than on the road. "Influences other than Aunt Susan's must be at work. My father would never have rushed off in a fever from town merely because of some ill-natured gossip in a letter from Lady Porthcawl."

His mind flew to the Earl's allusions to Marigny, and it occurred to him then that the latter had used his father's name at Bristol. He turned to Dale again.

"Before this business is ended I shall probably find it necessary to kick a Frenchman," he said.

"Make it two of 'em, my lord, an' let me take it out of the other one," growled Dale.

"Well, there is a bottle-holder," said Medenham, thinking of Devar, "a short, fat fellow, an Englishman, but a most satisfactory subject for a drop kick."

"Say when, my lord, an' I'll score a goal with him."

Dale seemed to be speaking feelingly, but his master paid slight heed to him then. A girl in muslin, wearing a rather stylish hat—now, where did Cynthia get a hat?—had just sauntered to that end of the hotel's veranda which gave a glimpse of the road.

"Make yourself comfortable in one of the cottages hereabouts," was Medenham's parting instruction to his man. "I don't suppose the car will be needed again to-day, but you might refill the petrol tank—on the off chance."

"Yes—my lord."

Dale lifted his cap. The ostler who had helped in the cleaning of the car overnight was standing near the open doors of the coach-house. He might not have heard the words, but he certainly saw the respectful action. His eyes grew round, and his lips pursed to give vent to an imaginary whistle.

"I knew," he told himself. "He's a toff, that's wot he is. Mum's the word, Willyum. Say nothink, 'specially to wimmen!"

Bowing low before his smiling goddess, Medenham produced the packet of letters. It happened that the unstamped note for Mrs. Devar lay uppermost, and Cynthia guessed some part, at least, of its contents.

"Poor Monsieur Marigny!" she cried. "I fear he had a cheerless evening in Hereford. This is from him. I know his handwriting.... While father and I were in Paris he often sent invitations for fixtures at the Velo—once for a coach-drive to Fontainebleau. I was rather sorry I missed that."

Medenham thanked her in his heart for that little pause. No printed page could be more legible than Cynthia's thought-processes. How delightful it was to feel that her unspoken words were mirrored in his own brain!

But these lover-like beatitudes were interrupted by a slight shriek. She had glanced curiously at a postmark, ripped open an envelope, and was reading something that surprised her greatly.

"Well, of all the queer things!" she cried. "Here's father in London. He started from Paris yesterday afternoon, and found he had just time to send me a line by paying a special postal fee at Paddington.... What?... Mrs. Leland going to join us at Chester!... Wire if I get this!..."

She reread the letter with heightened color. Medenham's heart sank to his boots while he watched her. Whosoever Mrs. Leland might be—and Cynthia's first cry of the name sent a shock of recognition through him—it was fully evident that the addition of another member to the party would straightway shut him out of his Paradise. Mrs. Devar, in the role of guardian, had been disposed of satisfactorily, but "Mrs. Leland" was more than a doubtful quantity. For some kindred reason, perhaps, Cynthia chose to turn and look at the sparkling Wye when next she spoke.

"I don't see why Mrs. Leland's unexpected appearance should make any real difference to our tour," she said in the colorless tone of one who seeks rather than imparts conviction. "There is plenty of room in the car. We must take the front seat in turn, that is all."

"May I ask who Mrs. Leland is?" he asked, and, if his voice was ominously cold, it may be urged in extenuation that in matters affecting Cynthia he was no greater adept at concealing his thoughts than the girl herself.

"An old friend of ours," she explained hurriedly. "In fact, her husband was my father's partner till he died, some years ago. She is a charming woman, quite a cosmopolitan. She lives in Paris 'most all the time, but I fancied she was at Trouville for the summer. I wonder...."

She read the letter a third time. Drooping lids and a screen of heavy eyelashes veiled her eyes, and when the fingers holding that disturbing note rested on the rail of the veranda again, still those radiant blue eyes remained invisible, and the eloquent eyebrows were not arched in laughing bewilderment but straightened in silent questioning.

"Mr. Vanrenen gives no details," she said at last, and seldom, indeed, did "Mr. Vanrenen" replace "father" in her speech. "Perhaps he was writing against time, though he might have told me less about the post and more of Mrs. Leland. Anyhow, he has a fine Italian hand in some things, and may be this is one of them.... But I must telegraph at once."

Medenham roused himself to set forth British idiosyncrasies on the question of Sunday labor. He remembered the telephone, however, and Cynthia went off to try and get in touch with the Savoy Hotel. He withdrew a little way, and began to smoke a reflective cigar, for he knew now who Mrs. Leland was. In twenty minutes or less Cynthia came to him. It was difficult to account for her obvious perplexity, though he could have revealed some of its secret springs readily enough.

"I'm sorry I shall not be able to take that walk, Mr. Fitzroy," she said, frankly recognizing the tacit pact between them. "We have a long day before us to-morrow, and we must make Chester in good time, as Mrs. Leland is coming alone from London. Meanwhile, I must attend to my correspondence."

"Ah. You have spoken to Mr. Vanrenen, then?"

"No. He was not in the hotel, but he left a message for me, knowing that I was more likely to 'phone than wire."

She was troubled, disturbed, somewhat resentful of this unforeseen change in the programme arranged for the next few days. Medenham could have chosen no more unhappy moment for what he had to say, but during those twenty minutes of reflection a definite line of action had been forced upon him, and he meant to follow it to the only logical end.

"I am glad now that I mentioned my own little difficulty at Hereford," he said. "Since alterations are to be the order of the day at Chester, will you allow me to provide another driver for the Mercury there? You will retain the car, of course, but my place can be taken by a trustworthy man who understands it quite as well as I do."

"You mean that you are dropping out of the tour, then?"

"Yes."

She shot one indignant glance at his impassive face, for he held in rigid control the fire that was consuming him.

"Rather a sudden resolve on your part, isn't it? What earthly difference does the presence of another lady in our party make?"

"I have been thinking matters over," he said doggedly. "Would you mind reading my father's letter?"

He held out the note received at the Green Dragon, but she ignored it.

"I take it for granted that you have the best of reasons for wishing to go," she murmured.

"Please oblige me by reading it," he persisted.

Perhaps, despite all his self-restraint, some hint of the wild longing in his heart to tell her once and for all that no power under that of the Almighty should tear him from her side moved her to relent. She took the letter, and began to read.

"Why," she cried, "this was written at Hereford?"

"Yes. My father waited there all night. He left for town only a few minutes before I entered the hotel this morning."

She read with puzzled brows, smiled a little at "Your aunt is making a devil of a fuss," and passed quite unheeded the solitary "F." in the signature.

"I think you ought to go to-day," she commented.

"Not because of any argument advanced there," he growled passionately.

"But your aunt ... she is making a—a fuss. One has to conciliate aunts at times."

"My aunt is really a most estimable person. I promise myself some amusement when she explains the origin of the 'fuss' to you."

"To me?"

"Yes. Have I not your permission to bring her to see you in London?"

"Something was said about that."

"May I add that I hope to make Mr. Vanrenen's acquaintance on Tuesday?"

She looked at him in rather a startled way.

"Are you going to call and see my father?" she asked.

"Yes."

"But—why, exactly?"

"In the first place, to give him news of your well-being. Letters are good, but the living messenger is better. Secondly, I want to find out just why he traveled from Paris to London yesterday."

The air was electric between them. Each knew that the other was striving to cloak emotions that threatened at any moment to throw off the last vestige of concealment.

"My father is a very clever man, Mr. Fitzroy," she said slowly. "If he did not choose to tell you why he did a thing, you could no more extract the information from him than from a bit of marble."

"He has one weak point, I am sure," and Medenham smiled confidently into her eyes.

"I do not know it," she murmured.

"But I know it, though I have never seen him. He is vulnerable through his daughter."

Her cheeks flamed into scarlet, and her lips trembled, but she strove valiantly to govern her voice.

"You must be very careful in anything you say about me," she said with a praiseworthy attempt at light raillery.

"I shall be careful with the care of a man who has discovered some rare jewel, and fears lest each shadow should conceal an enemy till he has reached a place of utmost security."

She sighed, and her glance wandered away into the sun-drowned valley.

"Such fortresses are rare and hard to find," she said. "Take my own case. I was really enjoying this pleasant tour of ours, yet it is broken in two, as it were, by some force beyond our control, and the severance makes itself felt here, in this secluded nook, a retreat not even marked on our self-drawn map. Where could one be more secure—as you put it—less open to that surge of events that drives resistlessly into new seas? I am something of a fatalist, Mr. Fitzroy, though the phrase sounds strange on my lips. Yet I feel that after to-morrow we shall not meet again so soon or so easily as you imagine, and—if I may venture to advise one much more experienced than myself—the way that leads least hopefully to my speedy introduction to your aunt is that you should see my father, before I rejoin him. You know, I am sure, that I look on you rather as a friend than a mere—a mere——"

"Slave," he suggested, trying to wrench some spark of humor out of the iron in their souls.

"Don't be stupid. I mean that you and I have met on an equality that I would deny to Simmonds or to any of the dozen chauffeurs we have employed in various parts of the world. And I want to warn you of this—knowing my father as well as I do—I am certain he has asked Mrs. Leland's help for the undertaking that others have failed in. I—can't say more. I——"

"Cynthia, dear! I have been looking for you everywhere," cried a detested voice. "Ah, there you are, Mr. Fitzroy!" and Mrs. Devar bustled forward cheerfully. "You have been to Hereford, I hear. How kind and thoughtful of you! Were there any letters for me?"

"Sorry," broke in Cynthia. "I was so absorbed in my own news that I forget yours. Here is your letter. It is only from Monsieur Marigny, to blow both of us up, I suppose, for leaving him desolate last night. But what do you think of my budget? My father is in London; Mrs. Leland, a friend of ours, joins us at Chester to-morrow; and Fitzroy deserts us at the same time."

Mrs. Devar's eyes bulged and her lower jaw fell a little. She could hardly have exhibited more significant tokens of alarm had each of Cynthia's unwelcome statements been punctuated by the crash of artillery fired in the garden beneath.

During a long night and a weary morning she had labored hard at the building of a new castle in Spain, and now it was dissipated at a breath. Her sky had fallen; she was plunged into chaos; her brain reeled under these successive shocks.

"I—don't understand," she gasped, panting as if she had run across vast stretches of that vague "everywhere" during her quest of Cynthia.

"None of us understands. That is not the essence of the contract. Anyhow, father is in England, Mrs. Leland will be in Chester, and Fitzroy is for London. He is the only real hustler in the crowd. Unless my eyes deceived me, he brought his successor in the car from Hereford. Really, Mr. Fitzroy, don't you think you ought to skate by the next train?"

"I prefer waiting till to-morrow evening if you will permit it," he said humbly.

Cynthia was lashing herself into a very fair semblance of hot anger. She felt that she was trammeled in a net of deception, and, like the freedom-loving American that she was, she resented the toils none the less because their strands remained invisible. Seeing Medenham's crestfallen aspect at her unjust charge with reference to Dale's presence, she bit her lip with a laugh of annoyance and turned on Mrs. Devar.

"It seems to me," she cried, "that Count Edouard Marigny has been taking an interest in me that is certainly not warranted by any encouragement on my part. Open your letter, Mrs. Devar, and see if he, too, is on the London trail.... Ah, well—perhaps I am mistaken. I was so vexed for the moment that I thought he might have telegraphed to father when we did not turn up at Hereford. Of course, that is sheer nonsense. He couldn't have done it. Father was in England before Monsieur Marigny was aware of our failure to connect with Hereford. I'm sure I don't know what is vexing me, but something is, or somebody, and I want to quarrel with it, or him, or her, real bad."

Without waiting for any opening of Marigny's note she ran off to her room. Medenham had turned to leave the hotel when he heard a gurgling cry:

"Mr. Fitzroy—Lord Medenham—what does it all mean?"

Mrs. Devar's distress was pitiable. Snatches of talk overheard in Paris and elsewhere warned her that Mrs. Leland would prove an unconquerable foe. She was miserably conscious that her own letter, posted overnight, would rise up in judgment against her, but already she had devised the plausible excuse that the very qualities which were excellent in a viscount were most dangerous in a chauffeur. Nevertheless, the letter, ill-advised though it might be, could not account for Peter Vanrenen's sudden visit to England. She might torture her wits for a year without hitting on the truth, since the summoning of the millionaire to the rescue appeared to be the last thing Count Edouard Marigny would dream of doing. She actually held in her hand a summary of the telegrams he had dispatched from Bristol, but her mind was too confused to work in its customary grooves, and she blurted out Medenham's title in a frantic attempt to gain his support.

"It means this," he said coolly, resolved to clear the ground thoroughly for Mrs. Devar's benefit; "your French ally is resorting to the methods of the blackmailer. If you are wise you will cut yourself entirely adrift from him, and warn your son to follow your example. I shall deal with Monsieur Marigny—have no doubt on that score—and if you wish me to forget certain discreditable incidents that have happened since we left London you will respect my earnest request that Miss Vanrenen shall not be told anything about me by you. I mean to choose my own time and place for the necessary explanations. They concern none but Miss Vanrenen and myself, in the first instance, and her father and mine, in the second. I have observed that you can be a shrewd woman when it serves your interests, Mrs. Devar, and now you have an opportunity of adding discretion to shrewdness. I take it you are asking for my advice. It is simple and to the point. Enjoy yourself, cease acting as a matrimonial agent, and leave the rest to me."

The residents in the hotel were gathering in the veranda, as the luncheon hour was approaching, so Mrs. Devar could not press him to be more explicit. In the privacy of her own room she read Marigny's letter. Then she learnt why Cynthia's father had hurried across the Channel, for the Frenchman had not scrupled to warn him that his presence was imperative if he would save his daughter from a rogue who had replaced the confidential Simmonds as chauffeur.

Forthwith, Mrs. Devar became more dazed than ever. She felt that she must confide in someone, so she wrote a full account of events at Symon's Yat to her son. It was the worst possible thing she could have done. Unconsciously—for she was now anxious to help instead of hindering Medenham's wooing—some of the gall in her nature distilled itself into words. She dwelt on the river episode with all the sly rancor of the inveterate scandalmonger. She was really striving to depict her own confusion of ideas when stunned by the discovery of Medenham's position, but she only succeeded in stringing together a series of ill-natured innuendoes. Sandwiched between each paragraph of the story were the true gossip's catchwords—thus: "What was I to think?" "What would people say if they knew?" "My dear, just picture your mother's predicament when midnight struck, and there was no news!" "Of course, one makes allowances for an American girl," and the rest.

Though this soured woman was a ready letter-writer, she was no reader, or in days to come she might have parodied Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot":

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipped me in ink?—my parents', or my own?

Not content with her outpouring to Devar she dashed off a warning to Marigny. She imagined that the Frenchman would grin at his broken fortunes, and look about for another heiress! And so, abandoning a meal to the fever of scribbling, she packed more mischief into an hour than any elderly marriage-broker in Europe that day, and waddled off to the letterbox with a sense of consolation, strong in the belief that the morrow would bring telegrams to guide her in the fray with Mrs. Leland.

Medenham sent a short note to his father, saying that he would reach London about midnight next day and asking him to invite Aunt Susan to lunch on Tuesday. Then he waited in vain for sight of Cynthia until, driven to extremes by tea-time, he got one of the maids to take her a verbal message, in which he stated that the climb to the summit of the Yat could be made in half an hour.

The reply was deadening.

"Miss Vanrenen says she is busy. She does not intend to leave the hotel to-day; and will you please have the car ready at eight o'clock to-morrow morning."

Then Medenham smiled ferociously, for he had just ascertained that the local telegraph office opened at eight.

"Kindly tell Miss Vanrenen that we had better make a start some few minutes earlier, because we have a long day's run before us," he said.

And he hummed a verse of "Young Lochinvar" as he moved away, thereby provoking the maid-servant to an expression of opinion that some folk thought a lot of themselves—but as for London shuffers and their manners—well there!



CHAPTER XII

MASQUES, ANCIENT AND MODERN

The clouds did not lift until Cynthia was standing in front of that remarkable Map of the World which reposes behind oaken doors in the south aisle of Hereford Cathedral. During the run from Symon's Yat, not even a glorious sun could dispel the vapors of that unfortunate Sunday. Cynthia had smiled a "Good-morning" when she entered the car, but beyond one quick glance around to see if the deputy chauffeur was in attendance—which Medenham took care he should not be—she gave no visible sign of yesterday's troubles, though her self-contained manner showed that they were present in her thoughts.

Mrs. Devar tried to be gracious, and only succeeded in being stilted, for the shadow of impending disaster lay black upon her. Medenham's only thrill came when Cynthia asked for letters or telegrams at the Green Dragon, and was told there were none. Evidently, Peter Vanrenen was not a man to create a mountain out of a molehill. Mrs. Leland might be trusted to smooth away difficulties; perhaps he meant to await her report confidently and in silence.

But that square of crinkled vellum on which Richard of Holdingham and Lafford had charted this strange old world of ours as it appeared during the thirteenth century helped to blow away the mists.

"I never knew before that the Garden of Eden was inside the Arctic Circle," said the girl, gazing awe-stricken at the symbolic drawings of the eating of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.

"No later than yesterday I fancied it might have been situated in the Wye Valley," commented Medenham.

The cast was skillful, but the fish did not rise. Instead, Cynthia bent nearer to look at Lot's wife, placed in situ.

"Too bad there is no word about America," she said irrelevantly.

"Oh, even at that date the United States were on the other side. You see, Richard was a person of intelligence. He anticipated Galileo by making the earth round, so he would surely get ahead of Columbus in guessing at a New World."

They were the only tourists in the cathedral at that early hour, so the attendant verger tolerated this flippancy.

"In the left-hand corner," he recited, "you see Augustus Caesar delivering orders for a survey of the world to the philosophers Nichodoxus, Theodotus, and Polictitus. Near the center you have the Labyrinth of Crete, the Pyramids of Egypt, the House of Bondage, the Jews worshiping the Golden Calf——"

"Ah, what a pity we left Mrs. Devar at the post-office—how she would have appreciated this!" murmured Medenham.

Still Cynthia refused to take the fly.

"May we visit the library?" she asked, dazzling the verger with a smile in her best manner. "I have heard so much about the books in chains, and the Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon characters. Is the volume really a thousand years old?"

From the Cathedral they wandered into the beautiful grounds of the Bishop's Palace, where a brass plate, set in a boundary wall, states in equivocal phrase that "Nell Gwynne, Founder of Chelsea Hospital, and Mother of the first Duke of St. Albans," was born near the spot thus marked. Each remembered the irresponsible chatter of Saturday, but neither alluded to it, nor did Medenham offer to lead Cynthia to Garrick's birthplace. Not forty-eight hours, but long years, as measured by the seeming trivialities that go to make or mar existence, spanned the interval between Bristol and Hereford. They chafed against the bonds of steel that yet sundered them; they resented the silent edict that aimed at parting them; by a hundred little artifices each made clear to the other that the coming separation was distasteful, while an eager interest in the commonplace supplied sure index of their embarrassment. And so, almost as a duty, the West Front, the North Porch, the Close, the Green, the Wye Bridge, were duly snap-shotted and recorded in a little book that Cynthia carried.



Once, while she was making a note, Medenham held the camera, and happened to watch her as she wrote. At the top of a page he saw "Film 6, No. 5: Fitzroy poses as the first Earl of Chepstow." Cynthia's left hand hid the entry just a second too late.

"I couldn't help seeing that," he said innocently. "If you will give me a print, I shall have it framed and place it among the other family portraits."

"I really meant to present you with an album containing all the pictures which turn out well," she said.

"You have not changed your mind, I hope?"

"N—no, but there will be so few. I was rather lazy during the first two days."

"You can trust me to fill in the gaps with exceeding accuracy."

"Oh, don't let us talk as if we would never meet again. The world is small—to motorists."

"I had the exact contrary in mind," he said quickly. "If we parted to-day, and did not meet for twenty years, each of us might well be doubtful as to what did or did not happen last Friday or Saturday. But association strengthens and confirms such recollections. I often think that memories held in common are the most solid foundation of friendship."

"You don't believe, then, in love at first sight," she ventured.

"Let me be dumb rather than so misunderstood!" he cried.

Cynthia breathed deeply. She was profoundly conscious of an escape wholly due to his forbearance, but she was terrified at finding that her thankfulness was of a very doubtful quality. She knew now that this man loved her, and the knowledge was at once an ecstasy and a torture. And how wise he was, how considerate, how worthy of the treasure that her overflowing heart would heap on him! But it could not be. She dared not face her father, her relatives, her host of friends, and confess with proud humility that she had found her mate in some unknown Englishman, the hired driver of a motor-car. At any rate, in that moment of exquisite agony, Cynthia did not know what she might dare when put to the test. Her lips parted, her eyes glistened, and she turned aside to gaze blindly at the distant Welsh hills.

"If we don't hurry," she said with the slowness of desperation, "we shall never complete our programme by nightfall.... And we must not forget that Mrs. Leland awaits us at Chester."

"To-night I shall realize the feelings of Charles the First when he witnessed the defeat of his troops at the battle of Rowton Moor," was Medenham's savage growl.

Hardly aware of her own words, Cynthia murmured:

"Though defeated, the poor king did not lose hope."

"No: the Stuarts' only virtue was their stubbornness. By the way, I am a Stuart."

"Evidently that is why you are flying from Chester," she contrived to say with a little laugh.

"I pin my faith in the Restoration," he retorted. "It is a fair parallel. It took Charles twenty years to reach Rowton Moor, but the modern clock moves quicker, for I am there in five days."

"I am no good at dates——" she began, but Mrs. Devar discovered them from afar, and fluttered a telegram. They hastened to her—Cynthia flushed at the thought that she might be recalled to London—which she would not regret, since a visit to the dentist to-day is better than the toothache all next week—and Medenham steeled himself against imminent unmasking.

But Mrs. Devar's main business in life was self.

"I have just heard from James," she cooed. "He promised to run up to Shrewsbury to-day, but finds he cannot spare the time. Count Edouard told him that Mr. Vanrenen was in town, and he regrets he was unable to call before he left."

"Before who left?" demanded Cynthia.

"Your father, dear."

"Left for where?"

Mrs. Devar screwed her eyes at the pink slip.

"That is all it says. Just 'left'?"

"That doesn't sound right, anyhow," laughed Medenham.

"Oh, but this is too ridiculous!" and Cynthia's foot stamped. "I have never before known my father behave in this Jack-in-the-Box fashion."

"Mrs. Leland will clear up the whole mystery," volunteered Medenham.

"But what mystery is there?" purred Mrs. Devar, blinking first at one, then at the other. She bent over the telegram again.

"James sent this message from the West Strand at 9.30 a.m. Perhaps he had just heard of Mr. Vanrenen's departure," she said.

Judging from Cynthia's occasional references to her father's character and associates, Medenham fancied it was much more likely that the American railway magnate had merely refused to meet Captain Devar. But therein he was mistaken.

At the very hour that the three were settling themselves in the Mercury before taking the road to Leominster, Mr. Vanrenen, driven by a perturbed but silent Simmonds, stopped the car on the outskirts of Whitchurch and asked an intelligent-looking boy if he had noticed the passing of an automobile numbered X L 4000.

"I s'pose you mean a motor-car, sir?" said the boy.

Vanrenen, a tall man, thin, close-lipped, with high cheekbones, and long nose, a man utterly unlike his daughter save for the wide-open, all-seeing eyes, smiled at the naive correction; with that smile some enchanter's wand mirrored Cynthia in her father's face. Even Simmonds, who had seen no semblance of a smile in the features of the chilly, skeptical man by whom he was dragged out of bed at an unearthly hour in the morning at Bristol, witnessed the alchemy, and marveled.

"Yes, sir, rather," continued the boy, brimming over with enthusiasm. "The gentleman went along the Hereford Road, he did, yesterday mornin'. He kem back, too, wiv a shuffer, an' he's a-stayin' at the Symon's Yat Hotel."

Peter Vanrenen frowned, and Cynthia vanished, to be replaced by the Wall Street speculator who had "made a pyramid in Milwaukees." Whence, then, had Cynthia telephoned? Of course, his alert mind hit on a missed mail as the genesis of the run to Hereford early on Sunday, but he asked himself why he had not been told of a changed address. He could not guess that Cynthia would have mentioned the fact had she spoken to him, but in the flurry and surprise of hearing that he was not in the hotel she forgot to tell the attendant who took her message that she was at Symon's Yat and not at Hereford.

"Are you sure about the car?" he said, rendered somewhat skeptical by the boy's overfullness of knowledge.

"Yes, sir. Didn't me an' Dick Davies watch for it all chapel-time?"

"But why?—for that car in particular?"

"The gentleman bust his tire, an' we watched him mendin' it, an' he set us a sum, an' promised us a bob each if we did it."

"Meanwhile he went to Hereford and back?"

"I s'pose so, sir."

Peter Vanrenen's attention was held by that guarded answer, and, being an American, he was ever ready to absorb information, especially in matters appertaining to figures.

"What was the sum?" he said.

To his very keen annoyance he found that he could not determine straight off how long two men take to mow a field of grass, which one of them could cut in four days and the other in three. Indeed, he almost caught himself saying "three days and a half," but stopped short of that folly.

"About a day and three-quarters," he essayed, before the silence grew irksome.

"Wrong, sir. Is it worth a bob?" and the urchin grinned delightfully.

"Yes," he said.

"A day an' five-sevenths, 'coss one man can do one quarter in a day, and t'other man a third, which is seven-twelfths, leavin' five-twelfths to be done next day."

Though the millionaire financier was nettled, he did not show it, but paid the shilling with apparent good grace.

"Did you find that out—or was it Dick Davies?" he asked.

"Both of us, sir, wiv' a foot rule."

"And how far is the Symon's Yat Hotel, measured by that rule?"

"Half a mile, sir, down that there lane."

While traveling slowly in the narrow way, Simmonds turned his head.

"It doesn't follow that because the boy saw Viscount Medenham yesterday his lordship is here now, sir," he said.

"You just do as you are told and pass no remarks," snapped Vanrenen.

If the head of the house of Vanrenen were judged merely by that somewhat unworthy retort he would not be judged fairly. He was tired physically, worried mentally; he had been brought from Paris at an awkward moment; he was naturally devoted to his daughter; he believed that Medenham was an unmitigated scamp and Simmonds his tool; and his failure to solve Medenham's arithmetical problem still rankled. These considerations, among others, may be pleaded in his behalf.

But, if Simmonds, who had stood on Spion Kop, refused to be browbeaten by a British earl, he certainly would not grovel before an American plutocrat. He had endured a good deal since five o'clock that morning. He told his tale honestly and fully; he even sympathized with a father's distress, though assured in his own mind that it was wholly unwarranted; he was genuinely sorry on hearing that Mr. Vanrenen had been searching the many hotels of Bristol for two hours before he came to the right one. But to be treated like a serf?—no, not if Simmonds knew it!

The car stopped with a jerk. Out leaped the driver.

"Now you can walk to the hotel," he said, though he distinguished the hotel by an utterly inappropriate adjective.

The more sudden the crisis the more prepared was Vanrenen—that was his noted characteristic, whether dealing with men or money.

"What has bitten you?" he demanded calmly.

"You must find somebody else to do your detective work, that is all," came the stolid answer.

"Don't be a mule."

"I'm not a mule. You're makin' a d——d row about nothing. Viscount Medenham is a gentleman to his finger tips, and if you were one you'd know that he wouldn't hurt a hair of Miss Vanrenen's head, or any lady's, for that matter."

"Where my daughter is concerned I am not a gentleman, or a viscount, or a person who makes d——d rows. I am just a father—a plain, simple father—who thinks more of his girl than of any other object in this wide world. If I have hurt your feelings I am sorry. If I am altogether mistaken I'll apologize and pay. I'm paying now. This trip will probably cost me fifty thousand dollars that I would have scooped in were I in Paris to-morrow. Your game is to attend to the benzine buzz part of the contract and leave the rest to me. Shove ahead, and step lively!"

To his lasting credit, Simmonds obeyed: but the row had cleared the air; Vanrenen liked the man, and felt now that his original estimate of his worth was justified.

At the hotel, of course, he had much more to learn than he expected. Oddly enough, the praises showered on "Fitzroy" confirmed him in the opinion that Cynthia was the victim of a clever knave, be he titled aristocrat or mere adventurer. For the first time, too, he began to suspect Mrs. Devar of complicity in the plot!

A nice kind of chaperon she must be to let his girl go boating with a chauffeur on the Wye! And her Sunday's illness was a palpable pretense—an arranged affair, no doubt, to permit more boating and dallying in this fairyland of forest and river. What thanks he owed to that Frenchman, Marigny!

Indeed, it was easy to hoodwink this hard-headed man in aught that affected Cynthia. Count Edouard displayed a good deal of tact when he called at the Savoy Hotel late the previous night, but his obvious relief at finding Vanrenen in London had induced the latter to depart for Bristol by a midnight train rather than trust wholly to Mrs. Leland's leisured strategy.