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Title: Cynthia's Chauffeur

Author: Louis Tracy

Illustrator: Howard Chandler Christy

Release date: March 2, 2010 [eBook #31472]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31472

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CYNTHIA'S
CHAUFFEUR ***

E-text prepared by D Alexander
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org)

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet
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http://www.archive.org/details/cynthiaschauffeu00traciala

Cynthia’s
Chauffeur
BY

LOUIS TRACY
AUTHOR OF
THE WINGS OF THE MORNING,
A SON OF THE IMMORTALS, ETC.,
ETC.

Illustrations by

HOWARD CHANDLER
CHRISTY

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1910, by

EDWARD J. CLODE

Entered at Stationers’ Hall

“There is no lovelier garden in England
than at Wells Palace.”

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Hired Car 1
II. The First Day’s Run 23
Some Emotions—without a
III. 47
Moral
Shadows—with Occasional
IV. 72
Gleams
V. A Flurry on the Mendips 94
VI. A Midsummer Night’s Vagaries 119
Wherein Cynthia Takes Her
VII. 143
Own Line
VIII. Breakers Ahead 167
IX. On the Wye 191
X. The Hidden Founts of Evil 216
XI. The Parting of the Ways 239
XII. Masques, Ancient and Modern 260
Wherein Wrath Beguiles Good
XIII. 283
Judgment
—And Good Judgment Yields
XIV. 307
To Folly
XV. The Outcome 324
XVI. The End of One Tour: the
Beginning
Of Another 344

CYNTHIA’S CHAUFFEUR

CHAPTER I
THE HIRED CAR

Derby Day fell that year on the first Wednesday in June. By a whim of the
British climate, the weather was fine; in fact, no rain had fallen on
southern England since the previous Sunday. Wise after the event, the
newspapers published cheerful “forecasts,” and certain daring “experts”
discussed the probabilities of a heat wave. So London, on that bright
Wednesday morning, was agog with excitement over its annual holiday; and
at such a time London is the gayest and liveliest city in the world.
And then, wholly independent of the weather, there was the Great Question.
From the hour when the first ’bus rumbled Citywards until some few
seconds before three o’clock in the afternoon the mass of the people seemed
to find delight in asking and answering it. The Question was ever the same;
but the answer varied. In its way, the Question formed a tribute to the
advance of democracy. It caused strangers to exchange opinions and
pleasantries in crowded trains and omnibuses. It placed peers and
commoners on an equality. During some part of the day it completely
eclipsed all other topics of conversation.
Thus, young Lord Medenham made no pretense of shirking it while he
stood on the steps of his father’s mansion in Cavendish Square and watched
his chauffeur stowing a luncheon basket beneath the front seat of the
Mercury 38.
“You know a bit about racing, Tomkinson,” he said, smiling at the elderly
butler who had brought the basket out of the house. “What’s going to win?”
“The King’s horse, my lord,” replied Tomkinson, with the unctuous
conviction of a prelate laying down a dogma.
“Is it as sure as all that?”
“Yes, my lord.”

“Well, I hope so. You are on a sovereign—By gad, you really are, you
know.”
Tomkinson was far too keenly alive to the monetary side of the transaction
to pay heed to the quip. His portly figure curved in a superb bow.
“Thank you, my lord,” said he.
“Remind me this evening if you are right. I shall not forget to damn you if
you are wrong.”
Tomkinson ignored the chance of error and its consequences.
“Your lordship will be home for dinner?”
“Yes, I have no other engagement. All ready, Dale?” for the chauffeur was
in his seat, and the engine was purring with the placid hum of a machine in
perfect tune.
Tomkinson moved grandly down the steps, ushered Viscount Medenham
into the car, and watched its graceful swoop into Holles Street.
“Times have changed,” said he to himself. “Twenty years ago, when I first
came here, his lordship’s father would have given me a tip, and he wouldn’t
have been coming home for dinner, neether.”
By that last fatal word Tomkinson betrayed the cloven hoof. At least, he
was no prelate—and his assumption of the prophetic rôle would soon be put
to the test. But he had answered the Great Question.
The Mercury crossed Oxford Street and insinuated itself into the aristocratic
narrowness of Mayfair. It stopped in Curzon Street, opposite a house gay
with flowers in window-boxes. The Viscount looked at his watch.
“How far to Epsom?” he asked over Dale’s shoulder.
“About sixteen miles by the direct road, my lord, but it will be best to go
round by Kingston and avoid the worst of the traffic. We ought to allow an
hour for the run.”
“An hour!”

“We are not in France now, my lord. The police here would have spasms if
they saw the car extended.”
Lord Medenham sighed.
“We must reason with them,” he said. “But not to-day. Lady St. Maur
declares she is nervous. Of course, she doesn’t know our Mercury. After to-
day’s experience it will be quite another matter when I take her to Brighton
for lunch on Sunday.”
Dale said nothing. He had met his employer at Marseilles in October, when
Lord Medenham landed from Africa; during the preceding twelve months
his license had been indorsed three times for exceeding the speed limit on
the Brighton Road, and he had paid £40 in fines and costs to various petty
sessional courts in Surrey and Sussex. Sunday, therefore, promised
developments.
Medenham seemed to think that his aunt, Lady St. Maur, would be waiting
for him on the doorstep. As no matronly figure materialized in that locality,
he alighted, and obeyed a brass-lettered injunction to “knock and ring.”
Then he disappeared inside the house, and remained there so long that
Dale’s respect for the law began to weaken. The chauffeur had been given a
racing certainty for the first race; the hour was nearing twelve, and every
road leading to Epsom Downs would surely be congested.
His lordship came out, alone, and it was clear that the unexpected had
happened.
“Nice thing!” he said, with the closest semblance to a growl that his good-
natured drawl was capable of. “The whole show is busted, Dale. Her
ladyship is in bed with her annual bilious attack—comes of eating forced
strawberries, she says. And she adores strawberries. So do I. There’s pounds
of ’em in that luncheon basket. Who’s going to eat ’em?”
Dale foresaw no difficulties in that respect, but he did realize at once that
his master cared little about racing, and, so far as Epsom was concerned,
would abandon the day’s excursion without a pang. He grew desperate. But,
being something of a stoic, he kept his feelings in check, and played a card
that could hardly fail.

“You will find plenty of youngsters on the hill who will be glad of them, my
lord,” said he.
“You don’t tell me so! Kiddies at the Derby! Well, why not? It shows what
a stranger I am in my own land that I should never have seen the blessed
race. Right ahead then, Dale; we must back the King’s horse and arrange a
school treat. But I’ll take the wheel. Can you tuck your legs over that
basket? I’m not going to sit alone in the tonneau. And, who knows?—we
may pick up someone on the road.”
Starting on the switch, the car sprang off towards Piccadilly. Dale sighed in
his relief. With ordinary luck, they ought to reach Epsom before one
o’clock, and racing did not begin till half an hour later. He left wholly out of
reckoning the mysterious element in human affairs that allots adventures to
the adventurous, though close association with Viscount Medenham during
the past nine months ought to have taught him the wisdom of caution.
Several chapters of a very interesting book might be supplied by his
lordship’s motoring experiences on the Continent, and these would only
supplement the still more checkered biography of one who, at the close of
the Boer War, elected to shoot his way home through the Mid-African
haunts of big game rather than return by orthodox troopship. On the face of
things, it was absurd to imagine that a self-confessed wanderer should be
permitted to see his first Derby in the sacrosanct company of a stout aunt
and a well-filled luncheon basket. Even Medenham’s recording angel must
have smiled at the conceit, though doubtless shaking a grave head when the
announcement of the Dowager’s indisposition revealed the first twist from
the path of good intent. As for Lady St. Maur, she declared long afterwards
that the whole amazing entanglement could be traced distinctly to her
fondness for the ducal fruit raised under glass. A cherry-stone lodged in the
vermiform appendix of an emperor has more than once played strange
pranks with the map of Europe, so it is not surprising that a strawberry,
subtly bestowed in a place well adapted to the exercise of its fell skill,
should be able to convulse a section of the British peerage.
Be that as it may, the hap that put Medenham in control of his Mercury
unquestionably led to the next turn in events. A man driving a high-powered
car watches the incidents of the road more closely than the same individual
lounging at ease in the back seat. Hence, his lordship’s attention was caught

instantly by a touring car drawn up close to the curb in Down Street. That
short thoroughfare forms, as it were, a backwash for the traffic of
Piccadilly. At the moment it held no other vehicle than the two automobiles,
and it required no second look at the face of the driver of the motionless car
to discover that something was seriously amiss. Anger and despair struggled
there for predominance. Richard the Third of England must have given just
such a glance at his last horse foundered on Bosworth Field.
Medenham never passed another motorist in trouble without stopping.
“Anything the matter?” he asked, when the Mercury was halted with the
ease of a trained athlete poised in suspended motion.
“Everything!”
The chauffeur snapped out the word without turning. He was a man devoid
of faith, or hope, or charity.
“Can I help?”
“Can you h—l!” came the surly response.
Thereupon, many viscounts would have swept on into Piccadilly without
further parley—not so Medenham. He scrutinized the soldierly figure, the
half-averted face.
“You must be hard hit, Simmonds, before you would answer me in that
fashion,” said he quietly.
Simmonds positively jumped when he heard his name. He wheeled round,
raised his cap, and broke into stuttering excuse.
“I beg your lordship’s pardon—I hadn’t the least notion——”
These two had not met since they discussed Boer trenches and British
generals during a momentary halt on the Tugela slope of Spion Kop.
Medenham remembered the fact, and forgave a good deal on account of it.
“I have seen you look far less worried under a plunging fire from a pom-
pom,” he said cheerily. “Now, what is it? Wires out of order?”

“No, my lord. That wouldn’t bother me very long. It’s a regular smash this
time—transmission shaft snapped.”
“Why?”
“I was run into by a railway van, and forced against a street refuge.”
“Well, if it was not your fault——”
“Oh, I can claim damages right enough. I have plenty of witnesses. Even
the driver of the van could only say that one of his horses slipped. It’s the
delay I’m jibbing at. I hate to disappoint my customers, and this accident
may cost me three hundred pounds, and a business of my own into the
bargain.”
“By gad! That sounds rather stiff. What’s the hurry?”
“This is my own car, my lord. Early in the spring I was lucky enough to fall
in with a rich American. I was driving for a company then, but he offered
me three hundred pounds, money down, for a three months’ contract.
Straightaway I bought this car for five hundred, and it is half paid for. Now
the same gentleman writes from Paris that I am to take his daughter and
another lady on a thousand miles’ run for ten days, and he says he is
prepared to hire me and the car for the balance of another period of three
months on the same terms.”
“But the ladies will be reasonable when you explain matters.”
“Ladies are never reasonable, my lord—especially young ones. I have met
Miss Vanrenen only once, but she struck me as one who was very much
accustomed to having her own way. And she has planned this tour to the last
minute. Any other day I might have hired a car, and picked up my own
somewhere on the road, but on Derby Day and in fine weather——”
Simmonds spread wide his hands in sheer inability to find words that would
express the hopelessness of retrieving his shattered fortunes. Dale was
fidgeting, fingering taps and screws unnecessarily, but Medenham was
pondering his former trooper’s plight. He refused to admit that the position
was quite so bad as it was painted.

“Oh, come now,” said he, “I’ll give you a tow to the nearest repair shop,
and a word from me will expedite the business. Meanwhile, you must jump
into a hansom and appeal to the sympathies of Miss—Vanrenen, is it?”
“No use, my lord,” was the stubborn answer. “I am very much obliged to
you, but I would not dream of detaining you.”
“Simmonds, you are positively cantankerous. I can spare the time.”
“The first race is at 1.30, my lord,” muttered Dale, greatly daring.
Medenham laughed.
“You, too?” he cried. “Someone has given you a tip, I suppose?”
Dale flushed under this direct analysis of his feelings. He grinned
sheepishly.
“I am told that Eyot can’t lose the first race, my lord,” he said.
“Ah! And how much do you mean to speculate?”
“A sovereign, my lord.”
“Hand it over. I will lay you starting price.”
Somewhat taken aback, though nothing said or done by Viscount
Medenham could really surprise him, Dale’s leather garments creaked and
groaned while he produced the coin, which his master duly pocketed.
“Now, Simmonds,” went on the pleasant, lazy voice, “you see how I have
comforted Dale by taking his money; won’t you tell me what is the real
obstacle that blocks the way? Are you afraid to face this imperious young
lady?”
“No, my lord. No man can provide against an accident of this sort. But Miss
Vanrenen will lose all confidence in me. The arrangement was that to-day’s
spin should be a short one—to Brighton. I was to take the ladies to Epsom
in time for the Derby, and then we were to run quietly to the Metropole.
Miss Vanrenen made such a point of seeing the race that she will be horribly
disappointed. There is an American horse entered——”

“By gad, another gambler!”
Simmonds laughed grimly.
“I don’t think Miss Vanrenen knows much about racing, my lord, but the
owner of Grimalkin is a friend of her father’s, and he is confident about
winning this year.”
“I am beginning to understand. You are in a fix of sorts, Simmonds.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And what is your plan? I suppose you have one.”
“I have sent for a boy messenger, my lord. When he arrives I shall write—
Oh, here he is.”
Viscount Medenham descended leisurely and lit a cigarette. Dale, the stoic,
folded his arms and looked fixedly at the press of vehicles passing the end
of the street. Vivid memories of Lord Medenham’s chivalrous courtesy—his
lordship’s dashed tomfoolery he called it—warned him that life was about
to assume new interests.
The boy messenger, summoned telephonically by a sympathetic maid-
servant in a neighboring house, guessed that the gentleman standing on the
pavement owned the “motor-car” to which he had been directed. Here were
two cars, but the boy did not hesitate. He saluted.
“Messenger, sir,” he said.
“This way,” intervened Simmonds curtly.
“No. I want you,” said Medenham. “You know Sevastopolo’s, the cigarette
shop in Bond Street?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take this card there, and ask him to dispatch the order at once.”
Meanwhile he was writing: “Kindly send 1,000 Salonikas to 91 Cavendish
Square.”

Simmonds looked anxious. He was not a smooth-spoken fellow, but he did
not wish to offend Lord Medenham.
“Would your lordship mind if I sent the boy to the Savoy Hotel first?” he
asked nervously. “It is rather late, and Miss Vanrenen will be expecting
me.”
“What time are you due at the Savoy?”
“We were to start at twelve o’clock, but the ladies’ luggage had to be
strapped on, and——”
“Ah, the deuce! That sounds formidable.”
“Of course they must stow everything into the canvas trunks I supplied, my
lord.”
Medenham stooped and examined the screws which fastened an iron grid at
the back of the broken-down vehicle.
“Whip open the tool box, Dale, and transfer that arrangement to my car,” he
said briskly. “Make it fit somehow. I don’t approve of damaged paintwork,
nor of weight behind the driving-wheels for that matter, but time presses,
and the ladies might shy at a request to repack their belongings into my kit-
bags, even if I were carrying them. Now, Simmonds, give me the route, if
you know it, and hand over your road maps. I mean to take your place until
your car is put right. Wire me where to expect you. You ought to be ship-
shape in three days, at the utmost.”
“My lord——” began the overwhelmed Simmonds.
“I’ll see you hanged as high as Haman before I hand over my Mercury to
you, if that is what you are thinking of,” said Medenham sharply. “Why,
man, she is built like a watch. It would take you a month to understand her.
Now, you boy, be off to Sevastopolo’s. Where can I buy a chauffeur’s kit,
Simmonds?”
“Your lordship is really too kind. I couldn’t think of permitting it,” muttered
Simmonds.
“What, then—do you refuse my assistance?”

“It isn’t that, my lord. I am awfully grateful——”
“Are you afraid that I shall run off with Miss Vanrenen—hold her to ransom
—send Black Hand letters to her father, and that sort of thing?”
“From what little I have seen of Miss Vanrenen she is much more likely to
run off with you, my lord. But——”
“You’re growing incoherent, Simmonds. For goodness’ sake tell me where I
am to go. You can safely leave all the rest to me, and we haven’t a minute to
lose if I am to secure any sort of a decent motoring kit before I turn up at
the hotel. Pull yourself together, man. Action front and fire! Guns
unlimbered and first range-finder dispatched in nineteen seconds—eh,
what?”
Simmonds squared his shoulders. He had been a driver in the Royal
Artillery before he joined Viscount Medenham’s troop of Imperial
Yeomanry. There was no further argument. Dale, Oriental in phlegm now
that Eyot was safely backed, was already unscrewing the luggage carrier.
Half an hour later, the Mercury curled with sinuous grace out of the busy
Strand into the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel. The inclosure snorted with
motors, the air was petrolisé, all the world of the hotel was going, or had
already gone, to Epsom.
One quick glance at the lines of traffic showed Medenham that the Swiss
Rear-Admiral on duty would not allow him to remain an unnecessary
instant in front of the actual doorway. He swung his car to the exit side,
crept in behind a departing taxicab, and grabbed a hurrying boy in buttons.
“You listen to me, boy,” he said.
The boy remarked that his hearing was perfect.
“Well, go to Miss Vanrenen and say that her motor is waiting. Seize a
porter, and do not leave him until he has brought two canvas trunks from
the lady’s rooms. Help him to strap them on the grid, and I’ll give each of
you half-a-crown.”
The boy vanished. Never before had a chauffeur addressed him so
convincingly.

Medenham, standing by the side of the car, was deep in the contours of a
road map of Sussex when a sweet if somewhat petulant voice, apparently at
his elbow, complained that its owner could not see Simmonds anywhere. He
turned instantly. A slim, straight-figured girl, wearing a dust-cloak and
motor veil, had come out from the Savoy Court doorway and was
scrutinizing every automobile in sight. Near her was a short, stout woman
whose personality seemed to be strangely familiar to Medenham. He never
forgot anyone, and this lady was certainly not one of his acquaintances;
nevertheless, her features, her robin-like strut, her very amplitude of girth
and singular rotundity of form, came definitely within the net of his
retentive memory.
To be sure, he gave her but brief survey, since her companion, in all
likelihood Miss Vanrenen, might quite reasonably attract his attention.
Indeed, she would find favor in the eyes of any young man, let alone one
who had such cause as Viscount Medenham to be interested in her
appearance. In her amazingly lovely face the haughty beauty of an
aristocrat was softened by a touch of that piquant femininity which the
well-bred American girl seems to bring from Paris with her clothes. A mass
of dark brown hair framed a forehead, nose, and mouth of almost Grecian
regularity, while her firmly modeled chin, slightly more pronounced in type,
would hint at unusual strength of character were not the impression
instantly dispelled by the changing lights in a pair of marvelously blue eyes.
In the course of a single second Medenham found himself comparing them
to blue diamonds, to the azure depths of a sunlit sea, to the exquisite tint of
the myosotis. Then he swallowed his surprise, and lifted his cap.
“May I ask if you are Miss Vanrenen?” he said.
The blue eyes met his. For the first time in his life he was thrilled to the
core by a woman’s glance.
“Yes.”
She answered with a smile, an approving smile, perhaps, for the viscount
looked very smart in his tight-fitting uniform, but none the less wondering.
“Then I am here instead of Simmonds. His car was put out of commission
an hour ago by a brutal railway van, and will not be ready for the road

during the next day or two. May I offer my services in the meantime?”
The girl’s astonished gaze traveled from Medenham to the spick and span
automobile. For the moment he had forgotten his rôle, and each word he
uttered deepened her bewilderment, which grew stronger when she looked
at the Mercury. The sleek coachwork and spotless leather upholstery, the
shining brass fittings and glistening wings, every visible detail in fact, gave
good promise of the excellence of the engine stowed away beneath the
square bonnet. Evidently Miss Vanrenen had cultivated the habit of
gathering information rapidly.
“This car?” she exclaimed, with a delightful lifting of arched eyebrows.
“Yes, you will not be disappointed in it, I assure you. I am doing Simmonds
a friendly turn in taking his place, so I hope the slight accident will not
make any difference to your plans.”
“But—why has not Simmonds himself come to explain matters?”
“He could not leave his car, which is in a side street off Piccadilly. He
would have sent a note, but he remembered that you had never seen his
handwriting, so, as a proof of my genuineness, he gave me your itinerary.”
Medenham produced a closely-written sheet of note-paper, which Miss
Vanrenen presumably recognized. She turned to her stout companion, who
had been summing up car and chauffeur with careful eyes since Medenham
first spoke.
“What do you think, Mrs. Devar?” she said.
When he heard the name, Medenham was so amazed that the last vestige of
chauffeurism vanished from his manner.
“You don’t mean to say you are Jimmy Devar’s mother?” he gasped.
Mrs. Devar positively jumped. If a look could have slain he would have
fallen then and there. As it was, she tried to freeze him to death.
“Do I understand that you are speaking of Captain Devar, of Horton’s
Horse?” she said, aloof as an iceberg.

“Yes,” said he coolly, though regretting the lapse. He had stupidly brought
about an awkward incident, and must remember in future not to address
either lady as an equal.
“I was not aware that my son was on familiar terms with the chauffeur
fraternity.”
“Sorry, but the name slipped out unawares. Captain Devar is, or used to be,
very easy-going in his ways, you know.”
“So it would seem.” She turned her back on him disdainfully. “In the
circumstances, Cynthia,” she said, “I am inclined to believe that we ought
to make further inquiries before we exchange cars, and drivers, in this
fashion.”
“But what is to be done? All our arrangements are made—our rooms
ordered—I have even sent father each day’s address. If we cancel
everything by telegraph he will be alarmed.”
“Oh, I did not mean that,” protested the lady hurriedly. It was evident that
she hardly knew what to say. Medenham’s wholly unexpected query had
unnerved her.
“Is there any alternative?” demanded Cynthia ruefully, glancing from one to
the other.
“It is rather late to hire another car to-day, I admit——” began Mrs. Devar.
“It would be quite impossible, madam,” put in Medenham. “This is Derby
Day, and there is not a motor to be obtained in London except a taxicab. It
was sheer good luck for Simmonds that he was able to secure me as his
deputy.”
He thanked his stars for that word “madam.” Certainly the mere sound of it
seemed to soothe Mrs. Devar’s jarred nerves, and the appearance of the
Mercury was even more reassuring.
“Ah, well,” she said, “we are not traveling into the wilds. If desirable, we
can always return to town by train. By the way, chauffeur, what is your
name?”

For an instant Medenham hesitated. Then he took the plunge, strong in the
belief that a half-forgotten transaction between himself and “Jimmy” Devar
would prevent that impecunious warrior from discussing him freely in the
family circle.
“George Augustus Fitzroy,” he said.
Mrs. Devar’s brows knitted; she was regaining her self-possession, and a
sarcastic smile now chased away a perplexing thought. She was about to
say something when Cynthia Vanrenen broke in excitedly:
“I declare to goodness if the hotel people have not fastened on our boxes
already. They seem to know our minds better than we do ourselves. And
here is the man with the wraps.... Please be careful with that camera.... Yes,
put it there, with the glasses. What are you doing, Fitzroy?” for Medenham
was discharging his obligations to the boy in buttons and a porter.
“Paying my debts,” said he, smiling at her.
“Of course you realize that I pay all expenses?” she said, with just the
requisite note of hauteur in her voice that the situation called for.
“This is entirely a personal matter, I assure you, Miss Vanrenen.”
Medenham could not help smiling; he stooped and felt a tire unnecessarily.
Cynthia was puzzled. She wrote that evening to Irma Norris, her cousin in
Philadelphia—“Fitzroy is a new line in chauffeurs.”
“By the way, where is your trunk?” she demanded suddenly.
“I came away unexpectedly, so I have arranged that it shall be sent to
Brighton by rail,” he explained.
Apparently, there was nothing more to be said. The two ladies seated
themselves, and the car sped out into the Strand. They watched the driver’s
adroit yet scrupulously careful dealing with the traffic, and Cynthia, at least,
quickly grasped the essential fact that the six cylinders worked with a silent
power that held cheap every other vehicle passed or overtaken on the road.
“It is a lovely automobile,” she murmured with a little sigh of satisfaction.

“Quite an up-to-date car, I fancy,” agreed her friend.
“I don’t understand how this man, Fitzroy, can afford to use it for hiring
purposes. Yet, that is his affair—not mine. I rather like him. Don’t you?”
“His manners are somewhat off-hand, but such persons are given to aping
their superiors. George Augustus Fitzroy, too—it is ridiculous. Fitzroy is the
family name of the Earls of Fairholme, and their eldest sons have been
christened George Augustus ever since the beginning of the eighteenth
century.”
“The name seems to fit our chauffeur all right, and I guess he has as good a
claim to it as any other man.”
Cynthia was apt to flaunt the Stars and Stripes when Mrs. Devar aired her
class conventions, and the older woman had the tact to agree with a careless
nod. Nevertheless, had Cynthia Vanrenen known how strictly accurate was
her comment she would have been the most astounded girl in London at
that minute. The Viscountcy, of course, was nothing more than a courtesy
title; in the cold eye of the law, Medenham’s full legal name was that which
Mrs. Devar deemed ridiculous. As events shaped themselves, it was of the
utmost importance to Cynthia, and to Medenham, and to several other
persons who had not yet risen above their common horizon, that Mrs.
Devar’s sneer should pass unchallenged. Though that lady herself was not
fashioned of the softer human clay which expresses its strenuous emotions
by fainting fits or hysteria, some such feminine expedient would certainly
have prevented her from going another hundred yards along the south road
had some wizard told her how nearly she had guessed the truth.
But the luck of the born adventurer saved Medenham from premature
exposure. “I dare all” was the motto of his house, and it was fated to be
tested in full measure ere he saw London again. Of these considerations the
purring Mercury neither knew nor cared. She sang the song of the free
highway, and sped through the leafy lanes of Surrey with a fine disregard
for Acts of Parliament and the “rules and regulations therein made and
provided.” Soon after one o’clock, however, she was compelled to climb
the road to the downs in meek agreement with two lines of toiling chars-à-
bancs and laboring motors. Just to show her mettle when the opportunity
offered, she took the steep hill opposite the stands with a greyhound rush

that vastly disconcerted a policeman who told Medenham to “hurry up out
of the dip.”
Then, having found a clear space, she dozed for a while, and Cynthia, like a
true-born American, began the day’s business by giving the answer before
either of her companions even thought of putting the Great Question.
“Grimalkin will win!” she cried. “Mr. Deane told my father so. I want to
play Grimalkin for ten dollars!”

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST DAY’S RUN

Though Medenham was no turf devotee, he formed distinctly unfavorable
conclusions as to the financial stability of the bawling bookmakers near
at hand.
“If you wish to do any betting, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, “give me the
money and I will invest it for you. There is no hurry. The Derby will not be
run till three o’clock. We have an hour and a half in which to study form.”
For the life of him he could not imitate the complete annihilation of self
practiced by the well-bred English servant. The American girl missed the
absence of this trait far less than the other woman, but, by this time, even
Mrs. Devar began to accept Medenham’s good-humored assumption of
equality as part of the day’s amusement.
Cynthia handed him a card. She had bought three while they were crawling
up the hill behind a break-load of jeering Cockneys.
“What will win the first race?” she asked. “Father says you men often hear
more than the owners about the real performances of horses.”
Medenham tried to look knowing. He thanked his stars for Dale’s
information.
“I am told Eyot has a chance,” he said.
“Well, put me a sovereign on Eyot, please. Are you playing the ponies, Mrs.
Devar?”
That lady, being quick-witted, took care not to offend Cynthia by
pretending not to understand, though it set Medenham’s teeth on edge to
hear a racehorse called a pony. She opened a gold purse and produced a
coin.

“I don’t mind risking a little,” she tittered.
Medenham found, however, that she also had handed him a sovereign, and
his conscience smote him, for he guessed already, with accuracy as it
happened, that she was Miss Vanrenen’s paid chaperon during the absence
of the girl’s father on the Continent.
“Personally, I am a duffer in matters connected with the turf,” he explained.
“A friend of mine—a chauffeur—mentioned Eyot——”
“Oh, that is all right,” laughed Cynthia. “I like the color—Eau de Nil and
white. Look! There he goes!”
She had good eyes, as well as pretty ones, else she could not have
distinguished the silk jacket worn by the rider of a horse cantering at that
moment along the cleared course. Crowded coaches, four rows deep, lined
the rails near the judge’s box, and the gay-hued parasols of their feminine
occupants almost completely blocked the view, a distant one in any case,
owing to the width of the intervening valley.
Medenham raised no further protest. He walked to a stand where a press of
people betokened the presence of a popular layer of odds, found that Eyot’s
price was chalked up at five to one, and backed him for four pounds. He
had to push and elbow his way through a struggling crowd; immediately
after the bet was made, Eyot’s quotation was reduced by two points in
response to signals tick-tacked from the inclosures. This, of course, argued
a decided following for Dale’s selection, and these eleventh hour
movements in the turf market are illuminative. Before he got back to the car
there was a mighty shout of “They’re off!” and he saw Cynthia Vanrenen
stand on the seat to watch the race through her glasses.
Mrs. Devar stood up, too. Both women were so intent on the troop of horses
now streaming over the crest of the six-furlong course that he was able to
stare his fill without attracting their attention.
“I like Cynthia,” he said to himself, “though I shall be in a deuce of a mess
if I meet her anywhere after this piece of masquerading. Not much chance
of that, I expect, seeing that Dad and I go to Scotland early in July. But
what a bore to tumble across Jimmy’s mater! I hope it is not a case of ‘like
mother like son,’ because Jimmy is the limit.”

A strange roar, gathering force and volume each instant, rose from a
hundred thousand throats. Soon the shout became insistent, and Cynthia
Vanrenen yielded to its magnetism.
“Eyot wins!” she cried delightedly. “Yes, none of them can catch him now.
Go on, jockey—don’t look round! Oh, if I were your master I’d give you
such a talking to. Ah-h-h! We’ve won, Mrs. Devar—we’ve won! Just think
of it!”
“How much, I wonder?” Mrs. Devar, though excited, had the calculating
habit.
“Five pounds each,” said Medenham, who had approached unnoticed
during the tumult.
Cynthia’s eyes sparkled.
“Five pounds! Why, I heard some betting person over there offering only
three to one.”
It was a task beyond his powers to curb an unruly tongue in the presence of
this emancipated schoolgirl. He met her ebullient mood halfway.
“I have evidently beaten the market—that is, if I get the money. Horrible
thought! I may be welshed!”
He strode back rapidly to the bookmaker’s stand.
“What do you think of our chauffeur now?” cried Cynthia radiantly, for the
winning of those few sovereigns was a real joy to her, and the shadow of
the welsher had no terrors, since she did not know what Medenham meant.
“He improves on acquaintance,” admitted Mrs. Devar, thawing a little under
the influence of a successful tip.
He soon returned, and handed them six sovereigns apiece.
“My man paid up like a Briton,” he said cheerfully. “I have no reliable
information as to the next race, so what do you ladies say if we lunch
quietly before we attack the ring for the Derby?”

There was an awkward pause. The air of Epsom Downs is stimulating,
especially after one has found the winner of the first race.
“We have not brought anything to eat,” admitted Cynthia ruefully. “We
ordered some sandwiches before leaving the hotel, and we mean to stop for
tea at some old-world hotel in Reigate which Mrs. Devar recommends.”
“Unfortunately I was not hungry at sandwich time,” sighed Mrs. Devar.
“If it comes to that, neither was I, whereas I have a most unromantic
appetite now. But what can do, as the Babus say in India. I am rather
inclined to doubt the quality of anything we can buy here.”
Medenham’s face lit up.
“India!” he cried. “Have you been to India?”
“Yes, have you? My father and I passed last cold weather there.”
Warned by a sudden expansion of Mrs. Devar’s prominent eyes, he gave a
quick turn to a dangerous topic, since it was in Calcutta that the gallant ex-
captain of Horton’s Horse had “borrowed” fifty pounds from him.
Naturally, the lady omitted the telltale prefix to her son’s rank, but it was
unquestionably true that the British army had dispensed with his services.
“I was only thinking that acquaintance with the East, Miss Vanrenen, would
prepare you for the mysterious workings of Kismet,” said Medenham
lightly. “When I came across Simmonds this morning I was bewailing the
fact that my respected aunt had fallen ill and could not accompany me to-
day. May I offer you the luncheon which I provided for her?”
He withdrew the wicker basket from its nook beneath the front seat; before
his astonished guests could utter a protest, it was opened, and he was deftly
unpacking the contents.
“But that is your luncheon,” protested Cynthia, finding it incumbent on her
to say something by way of polite refusal.
“And his aunt’s, my dear.”

In those few words Mrs. Devar conveyed skepticism as to the aunt and
ready acceptance of the proffered fare; but Medenham paid no heed; he had
discovered that the napkins, cutlery, even the plates, bore the family crest.
The silver, too, was of a quality that could not fail to evoke comment.
“Well, here goes!” he growled under his breath. “If I come a purler it will
not be for the first time where women are concerned.”
He laughed as he produced some lobster in aspic and a chicken.
“It is jolly useful to have as a friend a butler in a big house,” he said. “I
didn’t know what Tomkinson had given me, but these confections look all
right.”
Mrs. Devar’s glance dwelt on the crest the instant she took a plate. She
smiled in her superior way. While Medenham was wrestling with the cork
of a bottle of claret she whispered:
“This is screamingly funny, Cynthia. I have solved the riddle at last. Our
chauffeur is using his master’s car and his master’s eatables as well.”
“Don’t care a cent,” said Cynthia, who found the lobster admirable.
“But if any inquiry is made and our names are mixed up in it, Mr. Vanrenen
may be angry.”
“Father would be tickled to death. I shall insist on paying for everything, of
course, and my responsibility ends there. No, thank you—” this to
Medenham who was offering her a glass of wine. “I drink water only. Have
you any?”
Mrs. Devar took the wine, and Medenham fished in the basket for the St.
Galmier, since Lady St. Maur cultivated gout with her biliousness.
“Dear me!” she murmured after a sip.
“What is it now?” asked Cynthia.
“Perfect, my dear. Such a bouquet! I wonder what house it came from,” and
she pondered the crest again, but in vain, for heraldry is an exact science,
and the greater part of her education had been given by a hard world. She

did not fail, therefore, to notice that three persons were catered for by the
packer of the basket. An unknown upper housemaid was already suspect,
and now she added mentally “some shop-girl friend.” The climax was
reached when Medenham staged the strawberries. Cynthia, to whom the
good things of the table were commonplaces, ate them and was thankful,
but Mrs. Devar made another note: “Ten shillings a basket, at the very least;
and three baskets!”
A deep, booming yell from the mob proclaimed that the second race was in
progress.
“I can’t see a thing unless I am perched on the seat, and if I stand up I shall
upset the crockery,” announced Cynthia. “But I am not interested yet
awhile. If Grimalkin wins I shall shout myself hoarse.”
“He hasn’t a ghost of a chance,” said Medenham.
“Oh, but he has. Mr. Deane told my father——”
“But Tomkinson told me,” he interrupted.
“Tomkinson. Is that your butler friend?”
“Yes. He says the King’s horse will win.”
“Surely the owner of Grimalkin must know more about the race than a
butler?”
“You would not think so, Miss Vanrenen, if you knew Tomkinson.”
“Where is he butler?” asked Mrs. Devar suavely.
“I forget for the moment, madam,” replied Medenham with equal suavity.
The lady waived the retort. She was sure of her ground now.
“In any case, I imagine that both Mr. Deane and this Tomkinson may be
mistaken. I am told that a horse trained locally has a splendid chance—let
me see—yes, here it is: the Honorable Charles Fenton’s Vendetta.”
It was well that those bulging steel-gray eyes were bent over the card, or
they could not have failed to catch the flicker of amazement that swept

across Medenham’s sun-browned face when he heard the name of his
cousin. He had not been in England a full week as yet, and he happened not
to have read a list of probable starters for the Derby. He had glanced at the
programme during breakfast that morning, but some remark made by the
Earl caused him to lay down the newspaper, and, when next he picked it up,
he became interested in an article on the Cape to Cairo railway, written by
someone who had not the remotest notion of the difficulties to be
surmounted before that very desirable line can be constructed.
Cynthia, however, was watching him, and she laughed gleefully.
“Ah, Fitzroy, you hadn’t heard of Vendetta before,” she cried. “Confess now
—your faith in Tomkinson is shaken.”
“Vendetta certainly does sound like war to the knife,” said he.
“It is twenty to one,” purred Mrs. Devar complacently. “I shall risk the five
pounds I won on the first race, and it will be very nice if I receive a
hundred.”
“I stick to Old Glory,” announced the valiant Cynthia.
“The King for me,” declared Medenham, though he realized, without any
knowledge of the merits of the horses engaged, that the Honorable Charles
was not the sort of man to run a three-year-old in the Derby merely for the
sake of seeing his racing colors flashing in the sun.
Mrs. Devar kept to her word, and handed over the five pounds. Cynthia
staked seven, the five she had won and the ten dollars of her original intent:
whereupon Medenham said that he must cross the course and make these
bets in the ring—would the ladies raise any objection to his absence, as he
could not return until after the race? No, they were quite content to remain
in the car, so he repacked the luncheon basket and left them.
Vendetta won by three lengths.
Medenham had secured twenty-five to one, and the bookmaker who paid
him added the genial advice: “Put that little lot where the flies can’t get at
it.” The man could afford to be affable, seeing that the bet was the only one
in his book against the horse’s name. The King’s horse and Grimalkin were

the public favorites, but both were hopelessly shut in at Tattenham Corner,
and neither showed in the front rank at any stage of a fast run race. When
Medenham climbed the hill again, hot and uncomfortable in his leather
clothing, Mrs. Devar actually welcomed him with an expansive smile.
“What odds did you get me?” she cried, as soon as he was within earshot.
“A hundred and twenty-five pounds to five, madam,” he said.
“Oh, what luck! You must keep the odd five pounds, Fitzroy.”
“No, thank you. I hedged on Vendetta, so I am still winning.”
“But really, I insist.”
He handed her a bundle of notes.
“You will find a hundred and thirty pounds there,” he said, and she
understood that his refusal to accept her money was final. She was intensely
surprised that he had given her so much more than she expected, and the
first unworthy thought was succeeded by a second—how dared this
impudent chauffeur decline her bounty?
Cynthia pouted at him.
“Your Tomkinson is a fraud,” she said.
“Your Grimalkin was well named,” said he.
“That remark is very cutting, I suppose, Fitzroy.”
“Oh, no. I merely meant to convey that a cat is not a racehorse.”
“Poor fellow,” mused Cynthia, “he is vexed because he lost. I must make it
up to him somehow, but he is such an extraordinary person, I hardly dare
suggest such a thing.”
She began to adjust her veil and dust coat.
“If you are ready, Mrs. Devar,” she said, “I think we ought to hit the pike
for Brighton.”

Mrs. Devar laughed. Fitzroy evidently understood, as he had taken his seat
and the engine was humming.
“Americanisms are most fascinating,” she vowed. “I wish you would use
more of them, Cynthia. I love them.”
Cynthia was slightly ruffled, though if pressed for a reason she could hardly
have given one.
“Slang is useful occasionally, but I am trying to cure myself of the habit,”
she said tartly.
“A picturesque phrase is always pardonable. Oh, is this quite safe?——”
The Mercury, finding an opening, had shot down the hill with a smooth
celerity that alarmed the older woman. Cynthia leaned back composedly.
“Fitzroy means to reach the road before the police stop the traffic for the
next race,” she said. Then, after a pause, she added: “I wish we could keep
this car for the rest of our tour, yet I suppose I ought not to interfere in the
arrangement father made with Simmonds.”
Mrs. Devar frowned. Her momentary tremor had fled, and she had every
cause to regard with uneasiness the threatened substitution during the
forthcoming ten days, of this quite impossible Fitzroy for that very
chauffeur-like person, Simmonds. Her acquaintance with Peter Vanrenen
and his daughter was sufficiently intimate to warn her that Cynthia’s least
desire was granted by her indulgent parent; in fact, Cynthia would have
been hopelessly spoilt were it not for a combination of those happy chances
which seem to conspire at times in the creation of the American girl at her
best. She was devoted to her father, her nature was bright and cheerful, and
she had a heart that bubbled over with kindliness. Mrs. Devar chose the
right line of attack. She resolved to appeal to the girl’s sympathies.
“I am afraid it would be a rather cruel thing to deprive Simmonds of his
engagement,” she said softly. “He has bought a car, I understand, on the
strength of the contract with Mr. Vanrenen——”
“That doesn’t cut any ice—I mean there would be no ill effect for
Simmonds,” explained Cynthia hurriedly. “Father will meet us in London at

the end of our run, and Simmonds could come to us then.”
The steel-gray eyes narrowed. Their owner was compelled to decide
quickly. As opposition was useless, she laughed, with the careless ease of
one who was in no way concerned.
“Don’t you think,” she said, “that if your father sees this car Simmonds will
be dispensed with somehow?”
Cynthia nodded. The argument was unanswerable.
They were crossing the course at a walking pace; at that point a sort of
passage was kept clear by the police for the convenience of those occupants
of the stands who wished to visit the paddock. The owner of Vendetta,
having been congratulated by royalty, was taking some friends to admire
the horse during the rubbing-down process, when his glance suddenly fell
on Medenham. Though amazed, he was not rendered speechless.
“Well, I’m——” he began.
But the Mercury possessed a singularly loud and clear motor-horn, and the
voice of the Honorable Charles was drowned. Still, his gestures were
eloquent. Quite obviously, he was saying to a man whose arm he caught:
“Did you ever in your life see anybody more like George than that
chauffeur? Why, damme, it is Medenham!”
So Mrs. Devar lost a golden opportunity. She knew Fenton by sight, and her
shrewd wits must have set her on the right track had she witnessed his
bewilderment. Being a pretentious person, however, and not able to afford
the up-keep of a motor, she was enjoying the surprise of two well-dressed
women who recognized her. Then the car leaped forward again, and she
scored a dearly won triumph.
At this crisis Medenham’s scrutiny of the road map provided by Simmonds
for the tour was well repaid. He turned sharp to the right past the back of
the stands, and was fortunate in finding enough clear road to render pursuit
by his elderly cousin a vain thing, even if it were thought of. The Mercury
had to cross the caravan zone carefully, but once Tattenham Corner was
reached the way lay open to Reigate.

Through a land of gorse and heather they sped until they came to the
famous hill. They ran down in a noiseless flight that caused Cynthia to
experience the sensation of being borne on wings.
“I imagine that aeroplaning is something like this,” she confided to her
companion.
“If it is, it must be enjoyable. I don’t suppose, at my time of life, I shall ever
try to navigate the air in one of those frail contrivances pictured in the
newspapers. But I was nearly tempted to go up in a balloon two years ago.”
Cynthia stole a glance at Mrs. Devar’s rotund figure, and laughed. She
could not help it, though she flushed furiously at what she deemed an
involuntary rudeness on her part.
“Oh, it sounds funny, I have no doubt,” said the other, placidly good-
tempered, “but I really meant it at the moment. You have met Count
Edouard Marigny, I fancy?”
“Yes, in Paris last month. In fact——”
Cynthia hesitated. She had scarcely recovered from the excitement of the
racing and was not choosing her words quite happily. Mrs. Devar, still
sugary, ended the sentence.
“In fact, it was he who recommended me to Mr. Vanrenen as your chaperon.
Yes, my dear, Monsieur Marigny and I are old friends. He and my son are
inseparable when Captain Devar is in Paris. Well, as I was saying, the
Count offered to take me up in his balloon, L’Etoile, and I was ready to go,
but the weather became stormy and an ascent from the Velo was impossible,
or highly dangerous, at any rate.”
Mrs. Devar cultivated the high-pitched voice that she regarded as the hall-
mark of good breeding, and, in that silent rush downhill, Medenham could
not avoid hearing each syllable. It was eminently pleasing to listen to
Cynthia’s praise of his car, and he was wroth with the other woman for
wrenching the girl’s thoughts away so promptly from a topic dear to his
heart. Therein he erred, for the gods were being kind to him. Little recking
how valuable was the information he had just been given, he slackened
speed somewhat, and leaned back in the seat.

“We are nearing Reigate now,” he remarked with half-turned head. “The
town begins on the other side of that tunnel. Which inn do you wish to stop
at for tea?”
“It seems to me that I have barely ended lunch,” said Cynthia. “Shall we cut
out your old-world Reigate inn, Mrs. Devar, and take tea at Crawley or
Handcross?”
“By all means. How well you know the names of the towns and villages.
Yet you have never before visited this part of England.”
“We Americans are nothing if not thorough,” answered the girl. “I would
not be happy if I failed to look up our route on the map. More than that, I
note the name of each river we cross and try to identify every range of hills.
You must test me and count my mistakes.”
Mrs. Devar spread her hands in a gesture copied from her French
acquaintances.
“My dear, I am the most ignorant person geographically. I remember how
that delightful Count Edouard laughed when I asked him if the Loire joined
the Seine above or below Paris. It seems that I was thinking of the Oise all
the time. The Marchioness of Belfort told me of my error afterwards.”
Cynthia laughed merrily, but made no reply.
Medenham bent over the levers and the car danced on through Reigate.
Mrs. Devar impressed him as a despicable type of tuft-hunter. His
acquaintance with the species was not extensive; he had read of elderly
dowagers who eked out their slender means by introducing the daughters of
rich Americans to English society, and the thing was not in itself wholly
indefensible; but he felt sure that Cynthia Vanrenen needed no such social
sponsor, while the mere bracketing of Count Edouard Marigny with
“Jimmy” Devar caused him to regard this unknown Frenchman with a
suspicion that was already active enough so far as Mrs. Devar was
concerned. And the Marchioness of Belfort, too! A decrepit old cadger with
an infallible system for roulette!
Perhaps his mood communicated itself to the accelerator. At any rate, the
Mercury seemed to sympathize, and it was a lucky hazard that kept the

glorious stretch of road between Reigate and Crawley free of police traps
on that memorable Wednesday. The car simply leaped out of Surrey into
Sussex, the undulating parklands on both sides of the smooth highway
appearing to float past in stately procession, and there was a fine gleam in
Cynthia’s blue eyes when the first check to a splendid run came in the
outskirts of Crawley.
She leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Tea here, please,” she said. Then she added, as if it were an afterthought:
“If you promise to let her rip in that style after we reach the open country
again I shall sit on the front seat.”
The words were almost whispered into his ear. Certainly they were not
meant to enlighten Mrs. Devar, and Medenham, turning, found his face very
near the girl’s.
“I’m bribed,” he answered, and not until both were settled back in their
seats did they realize that either had said anything unusual.
Medenham, however, took his cup of tea à la chauffeur, helping himself to
bread and butter from a plate deposited on the bonnet by a waiting-maid.
When the ladies reappeared from the interior of a roadside restaurant he
was in his place, ready to start. He did not offer to put them in the car,
adjust their wraps, and close the door. If Miss Vanrenen liked to keep her
promise, that was her affair, but no action on his part would hint of prior
knowledge that she intended to ride in front.
Nevertheless, he could not repress a smile when he heard Mrs. Devar’s
distinctly chilly, “Oh, not at all!” in response to Cynthia’s polite apology for
deserting her until they neared Brighton.
Somehow, the car underwent a subtle change when the girl took her seat by
his side. From a machine quivering with life and power it became a
triumphal chariot. By sheer perfection of mechanical energy it had bridged
the gulf that lay between the millionaire’s daughter and the hired man, since
there could be no question that Cynthia Vanrenen placed Viscount
Medenham in no other category. Indeed, his occasional lapses from the
demeanor of a lower social grade might well have earned him her marked

disfavor, and, as there was no shred of personal vanity in his character, he
gave all the credit to the sentient creature of steel and iron that was so ready
to respond to his touch.
Swayed by an unconscious telepathy, the girl almost interpreted his
unspoken thought. She watched his deft manipulation of levers and brakes,
and fancied that his hands dwelt on the steering-wheel with a caress.
“You have a real lovely automobile, Fitzroy,” she said, “and I have a sort of
notion that you are devoted to it. May I ask—is it your own car?”
“Yes. I bought it six months ago. I learnt to drive in France, and, as soon as
I heard of the new American engine, I—er—couldn’t rest until I had tried
it.”
He was on the point of saying something wholly different, but managed to
twist the second half of the sentence in time. What would Miss Vanrenen
have thought had he continued: “I sent my chauffeur to England, and, on
receipt of his report, I had this car shipped within a week?”
There are problems too deep for speculation when a man is guiding a ton of
palpitating metal along a hedge-lined road at forty miles an hour. This was
one.
Cynthia, knowing nothing of any “new American engine,” would die rather
than confess her ignorance. Moreover, she was pondering a problem of her
own. If it was not his master’s car he might be open to a bargain.
“Simmonds is an old friend of yours, I suppose?” she said.
“Yes, I have known him some years. We were in South Africa together.”
“In the war, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How dreadful! Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Not with petrol, I am happy to state.”
There was an eloquent pause. Cynthia examined his reply, and discovered
that it covered a good deal of ground. Perhaps, too, it conveyed the least

little bit of a snub. Hence, her tone stiffened perceptibly.
“I mentioned Simmonds,” she explained, “because I think my father might
arrange—to the satisfaction of all parties, of course—that you should carry
through this present tour, while Simmonds would come into our service
when we return to London.”
Medenham laughed. In its way, the compliment was graceful and well
meant, but the utter absurdity of his position was now thrust upon him with
overwhelming force.
“I am very much obliged to you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, venturing to look
once more into those alluring eyes, so shy, so daring, so divinely wise and
childishly candid. “If circumstances permitted, there is nothing I would like
better than to take you through this Paradise of a June England; but it is
quite impossible. Simmonds must bring his car to Bristol, as I positively
cannot be absent from town longer than three days.”
Cynthia did not pout. She nodded appreciation of the weighty if
undescribed business that called Fitzroy and his Mercury back to London,
but in her heart she mused on the strangeness of things, and wondered if
this smiling land produced many chauffeurs who lauded it in such phrases.
Up and down Handcross Hill they whirred, treating that respectable
eminence as if it were a snow bump in the path of a flying toboggan.
Medenham had roamed the South Downs as a boy, and he was able now to
point out Chanctonbury Ring, the Devil’s Dyke, Ditchling Beacon, and the
rest of the round-shouldered giants that guard the Weald. In the mellow
light of a superlatively fine afternoon the Downs wore their gayest raiment
of blue and purple, red and green—decked, too, with ribands of white roads
and ruffs of rose-laden hedges.
Cynthia forgot many times, and he hardly ever remembered, that he was a
chauffeur, and the miles, too, were disregarded until the sea sparkled in
their eyes as they emerged from the great gap which the Devil forebore to
use when he planned to swamp a land of churches by cutting the famous
dyke.
Then the girl awoke from a day-dream, and the car was stopped on the
pretense that this marvelous landscape must be viewed in silence and at

rest. She rejoined Mrs. Devar, and began instantly to expatiate on the
beauties of Sussex, so Medenham ran slowly down the hill through
Patcham and Preston into Brighton.
And there, sitting in the wide porch of the Hotel Metropole, was a slim,
handsome Frenchman, who sprang up with all the vivacity of his race when
the Mercury drew up at the foot of the steps, dusty after its long run, but
circumspect as though it had just quitted the garage.
“Mrs. Devar, Miss Vanrenen! what a delightful surprise!” cried the stranger
with an accompaniment of wide smiles and hat flourishing. “Who would
have thought of meeting you here? Voyez, donc, I was moping in solitude
when suddenly the sky opens and you appear.”
“Deæ ex machinâ, in fact, Monsieur Marigny,” said Cynthia, shaking hands
with this overjoyed gentleman.
Mrs. Devar, not understanding, cackled loudly.
“We’ve had a lovely run from town, Count Edouard,” she gushed, “and it is
just too awfully nice of you to be in Brighton. Now, don’t say you have
made all sorts of engagements for the evening.”
“Such as they are they go by the board, dear lady,” said the gallant Count,
who had good teeth, and showed them in a succession of grins.
“Ten to-morrow morning, Fitzroy,” said Cynthia, turning on the steps as she
was about to enter the hotel. He lifted his cap.
“The car will be ready, Miss Vanrenen,” said he.
He got down, and scowled, yes, actually scowled, at a porter who was
hauling too strongly at the straps and buckles of the dust-covered trunks.
“Damage the car’s paint and I’ll raise bigger blisters on yours,” was what he
said to the man. But his thoughts were of Count Edouard Marigny, and, like
the people’s discussion of the Derby, they took the form of question and
answer.
“When is a coincidence not a coincidence?” he asked himself.

“When it is prearranged,” was the answer.
Then he drove round to the yard at the rear of the hotel, where Dale awaited
him, for Medenham would intrust the cleaning of the car to no other hands.
“You’ve booked my room at the Grand Hotel and taken my bag there?” he
inquired.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Make these people give you the key when the door is locked for the night,
and bring the car to my hotel at nine o’clock.”
He hurried away, and Dale looked after him.
“Something must ha’ worried his lordship,” said the man. “First time I’ve
ever seen him in a bad temper. An’ what about Eyot? Three to one the paper
says. P’raps he’ll think of it in the morning.”

CHAPTER III
SOME EMOTIONS—WITHOUT A MORAL

Nota table,
until he was dressing, and the contents of his pockets were spread on
did Medenham remember Dale’s commission. It was quite true,
as he told Mrs. Devar, that he had backed Vendetta for a small stake on his
own account. But that was an afterthought, and the bet was made with
another bookmaker at reduced odds. Altogether, including the few
sovereigns in his possession at the beginning of the day, he counted nearly
fifty pounds in gold, an exceptionally large amount to be carried in
England, where considerations of weight alone render banknotes preferable.
He slipped Dale’s money into an envelope, and took thirty pounds to be
exchanged for notes by the hotel’s cashier. At the same time he wrote a
telegram to his father, destroying two drafts before he evolved something
that left his story untold while quieting any scruples as to lack of candor. It
was not that the Earl would resent his unexpected disappearance after
nearly four years’ absence from home, because father and son had met in
South Africa during the war, and were together in Cannes and Paris
subsequently. His difficulty was to explain this freak journey satisfactorily.
The Earl of Fairholme held feudal views anent the place occupied in the
world by the British aristocracy. His own hot youth was crowded with
episodes that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be
shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was
gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional
American girl and a middle-aged harpy like Mrs. Devar.
So Medenham’s message was non-committal.
Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day. Have taken car
to Brighton, and Bournemouth. Home Saturday, perhaps earlier.
George.
Of course, he meant to fill in details verbally. It was possible in
conversation to impart a jesting turn to an adventure which would be

unconvincing and ambiguous in the bald phrases of a telegram.
Then he dined, filled a cigarette case from the box of Salonikas which
Tomkinson had not omitted to pack with his clothes, and strolled out, bare-
headed, to enrich Dale. He could trust his man absolutely, and was quite
sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage after a thorough
cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not counted on the pride of
the born mechanic. Though the car was housed for the night, when he
entered the garage the hood was off, and Dale was annoying two brothers of
the craft by explaining the superiority of his engine to every other type of
engine.
All three were bent over the cylinders, and Dale was saying:
“Just take a squint at them valves, will you?—ever seen anything like ’em
before? Of course you haven’t. Don’t look like valves, eh? Can you break
’em, can you warp ’em, can you pit ’em? D’ye twig how the mixture
reaches the cylinder? None of your shoulders or kinks to choke it up—is
there?—and the same with the exhaust. Would you ever have a mushroom
valve again after you’ve once cast your peepers over this arrangement?
Now, if I took up areonotting—if I wanted to fly the Channel——”
He stopped abruptly, having seen his master standing in the open doorway.
“By gad, Dale,” cried Medenham, “I have never heard your tongue wagging
in that fashion before.”
Dale was flustered.
“Beg pardon, my lord, but I was only——” he began.
“Only using the cut-out, I fancy. Come here, I want you a minute.”
The other chauffeurs suddenly discovered that they had urgent business
elsewhere. They vanished. Dale thought it necessary to explain.
“One of them chaps has a new French car, my lord, and he was blowing so
loudly about it that I had to take him down a peg or two.”
Medenham grew interested. Like every keen motorist, he could “talk shop”
at all times.

“What sort of car?”
“A 59 Du Vallon, my lord. It is the first of its class in England, and I rather
think his guv’nor is running it on show.”
“Indeed. Who is he?”
“A count Somebody-or-other, my lord. I did hear his name——”
“Not Count Edouard Marigny?” said Medenham, with a sharp emphasis
that startled Dale.
“That’s him, my lord. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Medenham, early in life, had formed the habit of not expressing his feelings
when really vexed, and it stood him in good stead now. Dale’s blunder was
almost irreparable, yet he could not find it in his heart to blame the man for
being an enthusiast.
“You have put me in a deuce of a fix,” he said at last. “This Frenchman is
acquainted with Miss Vanrenen. He knows she is here, and will probably
see her off in the morning. If his chauffeur recognizes the car he will be
sure to speak of it. That gives the whole show away.”
“I’m very sorry, my lord——”
“Dash it all, there you go again. But it is largely my own fault. I ought to
have warned you, though I little expected this sort of a mix-up. In future,
Dale, while this trip lasts, you must forget my title. Look here, I have
brought you your winnings over Eyot—can’t you rig up some sort of a yarn
that I am a sporting friend of yours, and that you were just trying to be
funny when you addressed me as ‘my lord’? If you have an opportunity, tell
Count Marigny’s man that your job is taken temporarily by a driver named
Fitzroy. By the way, is the chauffeur a Frenchman, too?”
“No, my l——.” Dale caught Medenham’s eye, a very cold eye at that
instant. “No, sir. He’s just a fitter from the London agency.”
“Well, we must trust to luck. He may not remember me in my chauffeur’s
kit, which is beastly uncomfortable, by the way. I must get you a summer
rig. Here is your money—five to one I took. Don’t lose sight of those two

fellows, and spend this half sovereign on them. If you can fill that chap with
beer to-night he may have a head in the morning that will keep him in bed
too late to cause any mischief. When we meet in Bournemouth and Bristol,
say nothing to anybody about either the car or me.”
Dale was a model of sobriety, but the excitement of “fives” when he looked
for “threes” was too much for him.
“I’ll tank him all right, my l——, I mean, sir,” he vowed cheerfully.
Medenham lit a new cigarette and strolled out of the yard.
From the corner of his eye he saw Marigny’s helper looking at him. Without
undue exaggeration, he craned his neck, rounded his shoulders, and carried
himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly idler. He reflected, too, that a
bare-headed man in evening dress would not readily be identified with a
leather-coated chauffeur, and Dale, he hoped, was sufficiently endowed
with mother wit to frame a story plausible enough to account for his
unforeseen appearance. On the whole, the position was not so bad as it
seemed in that first moment when the owner of the 59 Du Vallon was
revealed in the handsome Count. In any event, what did it matter if his
harmless subterfuge were revealed? The girl would surely laugh, while Mrs.
Devar would squirm. So now for a turn along the front, and then to bed.
It was a perfect June evening, the fitting sequel to a day of unbroken
sunshine. A marvelous amber light hovered beyond the level line of the sea
to the west; an exquisite blue suffused the horizon from south to east,
deepening from sapphire to ultramarine as it blended with the soft shadows
of a summer’s night. He found himself comparing the sky’s southeasterly
tint with the azure depths of Cynthia Vanrenen’s eyes, but he shook off that
fantasy quickly, crossed the roadway and promenade, and, propping himself
against the railings, turned a resolute back on romance. He did not gain a
great deal by this maneuver, since his next active thought was centered in a
species of quest for the particular window among all those storeyed rows
through which Cynthia Vanrenen might even then be gazing at the shining
ocean.
He looked at his watch. Half-past nine.

“I am behaving like a blithering idiot,” he told himself. “Miss Vanrenen and
her friends are either on the pier listening to the band, or sitting over their
coffee in the glass cage behind there. I’ll wire Simmonds in the morning to
hurry up.”
A man descended the steps of the hotel and walked straight across King’s
Road. A light gray overcoat, thrown wide on his shoulders, gave a lavish
display of frilled shirt, and a gray Homburg hat was set rakishly on one side
of his head. In the half light Medenham at once discerned the regular,
waxen-skinned features of Count Marigny, and during the next few seconds
it really seemed as if the Frenchman were making directly for him. But
another man, short, rotund, very erect of figure, and strutting in gait, came
from the interior of a “shelter” that stood a little to the right of Medenham’s
position on the rails.
“Hello, Marigny,” said he jauntily.
The Count looked back towards the hotel. His tubby acquaintance chuckled.
The effort squeezed an eyeglass out of his right eye.
“Aie pas peur, mon vieux!” cried he in very colloquial French. “My mother
sent a note to say that the fair Cynthia has retired to her room to write
letters. I have been waiting here ten minutes.”
Now, it chanced that Medenham’s widespread touring in France had rubbed
up his knowledge of the language. It is ever the ear that needs training more
than the tongue, and in all likelihood he would not have caught the exact
meaning of the words were it not for the hap of recent familiarity with the
accents of all sorts and conditions of French-speaking folk.
“Jimmy Devar!” he breathed, and his amazement lost him Marigny’s
muttered answer.
But he heard Devar’s confident outburst as the two walked off together in
the direction of the West Pier.
“You are growing positively nervous, my dear Edouard. And why? The
affair arranges itself admirably. I shall be always on hand, ready to turn up
exactly at the right moment. What the deuce, this is the luck of a
lifetime....”

The squeaky, high-pitched voice—a masculine variant of Mrs. Devar’s
ultra-fashionable intonation—died away midst the chatter and laughter of
other promenaders. Medenham’s first impulse was to follow and listen,
since Devar had yielded to the common delusion of imagining that none
except his companion on the sea-front that night understood a foreign
language. But he swept the notion aside ere it had well presented itself as a
means of solving an astounding puzzle.
“No, dash it all, I’m not a private detective,” he muttered angrily. “Why
should I interfere? Confound Simmonds, and d—n that railway van! I have
a good mind to hand the car over to Dale in the morning and return to town
by the first train.”
If he really meant what he said he ought to have gone back to his hotel,
played billiards for an hour, and sought his bedroom with an easy
conscience. He was debating the point when the conceit intruded itself that
Cynthia’s pretty head was at that moment bent over a writing-table in a
certain well-lighted corner apartment of the second floor, so he
compromised with his half-formed intent, whisked round to face the sea
again, and lighted another cigarette from the glowing end of its predecessor.
Some part of his unaccountable irritation took wings with the cloud of
smoke.
“Blessed if I can tell why I should worry,” he communed. “Never saw the
girl before to-day ... shall never see her again if I put Dale in charge.... Her
father must be a special sort of fool, though, to trust her to the care of the
Devar woman.... What was it that rotter said?—‘The affair arranges itself
admirably.’ And he would be ‘always on hand.’ What is arranging itself?...
And why should Jimmy Devar be ready, if need be, ‘to turn up exactly at
the right moment?’ I suppose the answer to the first bit of the acrostic is
simple enough. Cynthia Vanrenen is to become the Countess Marigny, and
the Devar gang stands in on the cash proceeds. Oh, a nice scheme! This
Frenchman is posted as to the tour. By the most curious of coincidences he
will reappear at Bournemouth, or Bristol, or in the Wye Valley. What more
natural than a day’s run in company?... Ah, I’ve got it! Jimmy is to come
along when Marigny thinks that Cynthia will take a seat in the 59 Du Vallon
for a change—just to try the new French car.... By gad, I shall have a word
to say there.... Steady, now, George Augustus! Woa, my boy; keep a tight

hand on the reins. Why in thunder should you concern yourself with the
wretched business, anyhow?”
It was a marvelously still night. Beneath him, on an asphalted path nearly
level with the stone-strewed beach, passed a young couple. The man’s voice
came up to him.
“Jones expects to be taken into partnership after this season, and I am pretty
certain to be given the management of the woolen department. If that comes
off, no more long hours in the shop for you, Lucy, but a nice little house up
there on the hill, just as quick as we can find it.”
“Oh, Charlie dear, I shall never be tired then....”
A black arm was suddenly silhouetted across the shoulders of a white
blouse, whose wearer received a reassuring hug.
“Let’s reckon up,” said the owner of the arm—“July, August, September—
three months, sweetheart....”
Medenham had never given a thought to marrying until his father hinted at
the notion during dinner the previous evening, and he had laughed at it,
being absolutely heart-whole. There was something irresistibly comical
then about the Earl’s bland theory that Fairholme House needed a sprightly
viscountess, yet now, twenty-four hours later, he could extract no shred of
humor from the idyl of a draper’s assistant. It seemed to be a perfectly
natural thing that these lovers should talk of mating. Of what else should
they whisper on this midsummer’s night, when the gloaming already bore
the promise of dawn, and the glory of the sea and sky spread quiet
harmonies through the silent air?
Perhaps he sighed as he turned away, but his own evidence on that point
would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes dwelt on
was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no possibility of
error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make assurance doubly sure, his
recognition of Cynthia was obviously duplicated by Cynthia’s recognition
of her deputy chauffeur.
In the girl’s case some degree of surprise was justified. It is a truism of
social life that far more distinctiveness is attached to the seemingly

democratic severity of evening dress than to any other class of masculine
garniture. Medenham now looked exactly what he was—a man born and
bred in the purple. No one could possibly mistake this well-groomed soldier
for Dale or Simmonds. His clever, resourceful face, his erect carriage, the
very suggestion of mess uniform conveyed by his clothing, told of lineage
and a career. He might, in sober earnest, have been compelled to earn a
living by driving a motor-car, but no freak of fortune could rob him of his
birthright as an aristocrat.
Of course, Cynthia was easily first in the effort to recover disturbed wits.
“Like myself, you have been tempted out by this beautiful night, Mr.
Fitzroy,” she said.
Then “Mr.” was a concession to his attire; somehow she imagined it would
savor of presumption if she addressed him as an inferior. She could not
define her mental attitude in words, but her quick intelligence responded to
its subtle influence as a mirrored lake records the passing of a breeze. Very
dainty and self-possessed she looked as she stood there smiling at him. Her
motor dust-coat was utilized as a wrap. Beneath it she wore a white muslin
dress of a studied simplicity that, to another woman’s assessing gaze, would
reveal its expensiveness. She had tied a veil of delicate lace around her hair
and under her chin, and Medenham noted, with a species of awe, that her
eyes, so vividly blue in daylight, were now dark as the sky at night.
And he was strangely tongue-tied. He found nothing to say until after a
pause that verged on awkwardness. Then he floundered badly.
“I am prepared to vouch for any explanation so long as it brings you here,
Miss Vanrenen,” he said.
Cynthia wanted to laugh. It was sufficiently ridiculous to be compelled, as it
were, to treat a paid servant as an equal, but it savored of madness to find
him verging on the perilous borderland of a flirtation.
“Do you wish, then, to consult me on any matter?” she asked, with
American directness.
“I was standing here and thinking of you,” he said. “Perhaps that accounts
for your appearance. Since you have visited India you may have heard that

the higher Buddhists, when they are anxious that another person shall act
according to their desire, remain motionless in front of that person’s
residence and concentrate ardent thought on their fixed intent.... Sitting in
dhurma on a man, they call it. I suppose the same principle applies to a
woman.”
“It follows that you are a higher Buddhist, and that you willed I should
come out. Your theory of sitting on the door-mat, is it? wobbles a bit in
practice, because I really ran downstairs to tell Mrs. Devar something I had
forgotten previously. Not finding her, I decided on a stroll. Instead of
crossing the road I walked up to the left a couple of blocks. Then I noticed
the pier, and meant to have a look at it before returning to the hotel.
Anyhow, you wanted me, Mr. Fitzroy, and here I am. What can I do for
you?”
Her tone of light raillery, supplemented by that truly daring adaptation of
the method of gaining a cause favored by the esoteric philosophy of the
East, went far to restore Medenham’s wandering faculties.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions, Miss Vanrenen,” he explained.
“Pray do, as they say in Boston.”
But he was not quite himself yet. He noticed that the lights were
extinguished in the corner of the second floor.
“Is that your room?” he asked, pointing to it.
“Yes.”
Her air of blank amazement supplied a further tonic.
“Queer thing!” he said. “I thought so. More of the occult, I suppose. But I
really wished to speak to you about Mrs. Devar.”
Cynthia was obviously relieved.
“Dear me!” she cried. “You two have taken a violent dislike to each other.
You see, Mr. Fitzroy, we Americans are rather pleased than otherwise if a
man acts and speaks like a gentleman even though he has to earn a living by
hustling an automobile, but your sure-enough British dames exact a kind of

servility from a chauffeur that doesn’t seem to fit in with your make-up.
Servility is a hard word, but it is the best I can throw on the screen at the
moment, and I’m real sorry if I have hurt your feelings by using it.”
Medenham smiled. Each instant his calmer judgment showed more and
more clearly that he could not offer any valid excuse for interference in the
girl’s affairs. For all he knew to the contrary, she might be tremulous with
delight at the prospect of becoming a French countess; if that were so, the
fact that he disapproved of Mrs. Devar’s matchmaking tactics would be
received very coldly. Cynthia’s natural interpretation of his allusion to her
chaperon offered a means of escape from a difficult position.
“I am greatly obliged by your hint,” he said. “Not that my lack of good
manners is of much account, seeing that I am only a stop gap for the courtly
Simmonds, but I shall endeavor to profit by it in my next situation.”
“Now you are getting at me,” cried Cynthia, her eyes sparkling somewhat.
“Do you know, Mr. Fitzroy, I am inclined to think you are not a chauffeur at
all.”
“I assure you there is not a man living who understands my special type of
car better,” he protested.
“That isn’t what I mean, so don’t wriggle. You met Simmonds when he was
in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so, thereby doing
him a good turn—isn’t that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“And you are not in the automobile business?”
“I am, for the time being.”
“Well, I am glad to hear it. I was shy of telling you when we reached the
hotel, but you understand, of course, that I pay your expenses during this
trip. The arrangement with Simmonds was that my father ante’d for petrol
and allowed twelve shillings a day for the chauffeur’s meals and lodgings.
Is that satisfactory?”
“Quite satisfactory, Miss Vanrenen,” said Medenham, fully alive to the
girl’s effective ruse for the re-establishment of matters on a proper footing.

“So you don’t need to worry about Mrs. Devar. In any event, since you
refused my offer to hire you for the tour, you will not see a great deal of
her,” she went on, a trifle hurriedly.
“There only remains one other point,” he said, trying to help her. “Would
you mind giving me Mr. Vanrenen’s address in Paris?”
“He is staying at the Ritz—but why do you want to know that?” she
demanded with a sudden lifting of eyebrows, for the hope was strong in her
that he might be induced to change his plans so far as the next nine days
were concerned.
“A man in my present position ought always to ascertain the whereabouts of
millionaires interested in motoring,” he answered promptly. “And now,
pardon me for advising you not to walk towards the pier alone.”
“Gracious me! Why not?”
“There is a certain class of boisterous holiday-maker who might annoy you
—not by downright ill-behavior, but by exercising a crude humor which is
deemed peculiarly suitable to the seaside, though it would be none the less
distressing to you.”
“In the States that sort of man gets shot,” she said, and her cheeks glowed
with a rush of color.
“Here, on the contrary, he often takes the young lady’s arm and walks off
with her,” persisted Medenham.
“I’m going to that pier,” she announced. “Guess you’d better escort me, Mr.
Fitzroy.”
“Fate closes every door in my face,” he said sadly. “I cannot go with you—
in that direction.”
“Well, of all the odd people!—why not that way, if any other?”
“Because Count Edouard Marigny, the gentleman whose name I could not
help overhearing to-day, has just gone there—with another man.”
“Have you a grudge against him, too?”

“I never set eyes on him before six o’clock this evening, but I imagine you
would not care to have him see you walking with your chauffeur.”
Cynthia looked up and down the broad sea front, with its thousands of
lamps and droves of promenaders.
“At last I am beginning to size up this dear little island,” she said. “I may go
with you to a racetrack, I may sit by your side for days in an automobile, I
may even eat your luncheon and drink your aunt’s St. Galmier, but I may
not ask you to accompany me a hundred yards from my hotel to a pier. Very
well, I’ll quit. But before I go, do tell me one thing. Did you really mean to
bring your aunt to Epsom to-day?”
“Yes.”
“A mother’s sister sort of aunt—a nice old lady with white hair?”
“One would almost fancy you had met her, Miss Vanrenen.”
“Perhaps I may, some day. Father and I are going to Scotland for a month
from the twelfth of August. After that we shall be in the Savoy Hotel about
six weeks. Bring her to see me.”
Medenham almost jumped when he heard of the projected visit to the
Highlands, but some demon of mischief urged him to say:
“Let’s reckon up. July, August, September—three months——”
He stopped with a jerk. Cynthia, already aware of some vague power she
possessed of stirring this man’s emotions, did not fail to detect his air of
restraint.
“It isn’t a proposition that calls for such a lot of calculation,” she said
sharply. “Good-night, Mr. Fitzroy. I hope you are punctual morning-time.
When there is a date to be kept, I’m a regular alarm clock, my father says.”
She sped across the road, and into the hotel. Then Medenham noticed how
dark it had become—reminded him of the tropics, he thought—and made
for his own caravanserai, while his brain was busy with a number of
disturbing but nebulous problems that seemed to be pronounced in
character yet singularly devoid of a beginning, a middle, or an end. Indeed,

so puzzling and contradictory were they that he soon fell asleep. When he
rose at seven o’clock next morning the said problems had vanished. They
must have been part and parcel with the glamor of a June night, and a starlit
sky, and the blue depths of the sea and of a girl’s eyes, for the wizard sun
had dispelled them long ere he awoke. But he did not telegraph to
Simmonds.
Dale brought the car to the Grand Hotel in good time, and Medenham ran it
some distance along the front before drawing up at the Metropole. By that
means he dissipated any undue curiosity that might be experienced by some
lounger on the pavement who happened to notice the change of chauffeurs,
while he avoided a prolonged scrutiny by the visitors already packed in
chairs on both sides of the porch. He kept his face hidden during the
luggage strapping process, and professed not to be aware of Cynthia’s
presence until she bade him a cheery “Good-morning.”
Of course, Marigny was there, and Mrs. Devar gushed loudly for the benefit
of the other people while settling herself comfortably in the tonneau.
“It was awfully devey of you, Count Edouard, to enliven our first evening
away from town. No such good fortune awaits us in Bournemouth, I am
afraid.”
“If I am to accept that charming reference as applying to myself, I can only
say that my good fortune has exhausted itself already, madame,” said the
Frenchman. “When do you return to London?”
“About the end of next week,” put in Cynthia.
“And your father—that delightful Monsieur Vanrenen,” said the Count,
breaking into French, “he will join you there?”
“Oh, yes. My father and I are seldom separated a whole fortnight.”
“Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there. I go to-day to Salisbury
—after that, to Hereford and Liverpool.”
“Why, we shall be in Hereford one day soon. What fun if we met again!”
Marigny looked to heaven, or as far in the direction popularly assigned to
heaven as the porch of the Metropole would permit. He was framing a

suitable speech, but the Mercury shot out into the open road with a
noiseless celerity that disconcerted him.
Medenham at once slackened speed and leaned back.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, “but I clean forgot to ask if you were quite ready
to start.”
Cynthia laughed.
“Go right ahead, Fitzroy,” she cried. “Guess the Count is pretty mad,
anyhow. He was telling us last night that his Du Vallon is the only car that
can hit up twenty at the first buzz.”
“Unpardonable rudeness,” murmured Mrs. Devar.
“On the Count’s part?” asked the girl demurely.
“No, of course not—on the part of this chauffeur person.”
“Oh, I like him,” was the candid answer. “He is a chauffeur of moods, but
he can make this car hum. He and I had quite a long chat last night after
dinner.”
Mrs. Devar sat up quickly.
“After dinner—last night!” she gasped.
“Yes—I ran into him outside the hotel.”
“At what time?”
“About ten o’clock. I came to the lounge, but you had vanished, and the
wonderful light on the sea drew me out of doors.”
“My dear Cynthia!”
“Well, go on; that sounds like the beginning of a letter.”
Mrs. Devar suddenly determined not to feel scandalized.
“Ah, well!” she sighed, “one must relax a little when touring, but you
Americans have such free and easy manners that we staid Britons are apt to

lose our breath occasionally when we hear of something out of the
common.”
“From what Fitzroy said when I told him I was going as far as the pier
unaccompanied it seems to me that you staid Britons can be freer if not
easier,” retorted Miss Vanrenen.
Her friend smiled sourly.
“If he disapproved he was right, I admit,” she purred.
Cynthia withheld any further confidences.
“What a splendid morning!” she said. “England is marvelously attractive on
a day like this. And now, where is the map? I didn’t look up our route
yesterday evening. But Fitzroy has it. We lunch at Winchester, I know, and
there I see my first English Cathedral. Father advised me to leave St. Paul’s
until I visit it with him. He says it is the most perfect building in the world
architecturally, but that no one would realize it unless the facts were pointed
out. When we were in Rome he said that St. Peter’s, grand as it is, is all
wrong in construction. The thrust downwards from the dome is false, it
seems.”
“Really,” said Mrs. Devar, who had just caught sight of Lady Somebody-or-
other at the window of a house in Hove, and hoped that her ladyship’s eyes
were sufficiently good to distinguish at least one occupant of the car.
“Yes; and Sir Christopher Wren mixed beams of oak with the stonework of
his pillars, too. It gave them strength, he believed, though Michael Angelo
had probably never heard of such a thing.”
“You don’t say so.”
The other woman had traveled far on similar conversational counters. They
would have failed with Cynthia, but the girl had opened the map, and talk
lagged for the moment.
Leaving the coast at Shoreham, Medenham turned the car northward at
Bramber, with its stone-roofed cottages gilded with lichen, its tiny gardens
gay with flowers, and the ruins of its twelfth-century castle frowning from
the crest of an elm-clothed hill. Two miles to the northwest they came upon

ancient Steyning, now a sleepy country town, but of greater importance
than Bath or Birmingham or Southampton in the days of the Confessor, and
redolent of the past by reason of its church, with an early Norman chancel,
its houses bearing stone moldings and window mullions of the Elizabethan
period, and its quaint street names, such as Dog Lane, Sheep-pen Street,
and Chantry Green, where two martyrs were burnt.
Thence the way lay through the leafy wonderland of West Sussex, when the
Mercury crept softly through Midhurst and Petersfield into Hampshire, and
so to Winchester, where Cynthia, enraptured with the cathedral, used up a
whole reel of films, and bought some curios carved out of oak imbedded in
the walls when the Conqueror held England in his firm grip.
They lunched at a genuine old coaching-house in the main street, and
Medenham persuaded the girl to turn aside from Salisbury in order to pass
through the heart of the New Forest. She sat with him in front then, and
their talk dealt more with the magnificent scenery than with personal
matters until they reached Ringwood, where they halted for tea.
Before alighting at the inn there she asked him where he meant to stay in
Bournemouth. He answered the one question by another.
“You put up at the Bath Hotel, I think?” he said.
“Yes. Someone told me it was more like a Florentine picture gallery than a
hotel. Is that true?”
“I have not been to Florence, but the picture gallery notion is all right.
When I was a youngster I came here often, and my—my people always—
well, you see——”
He nibbled his mustache in dismay, for it was hard to keep up a pretense
when Cynthia was so near. She ended the sentence for him.
“You came to the Bath Hotel. Why not stay there to-night?”
“I would like it very much, if you have no objection.”
“Just the opposite. But—please forgive me for touching on money matters
—the charges may be rather dear. Won’t you let me tell the head waiter to—
to include your bill with ours?”

“On the strict condition that you deduct twelve shillings from my account,”
he said, stealing a glance at her.
“I shall be quite business-like, I promise.”
She was smiling at the landscape, or at some fancy that took her, perhaps.
But it followed that a messenger was sent for Dale to the hostelry where he
had booked a room for his master, and that Mrs. Devar, after one stony and
indignant glare, whispered to Cynthia in the dining-room:
“Can that man in evening dress, sitting alone near the window, by any
possibility be our chauffeur?”
“Yes,” laughed the girl. “That is Fitzroy. Say, doesn’t he look fine and
dandy? Don’t you wish he was with us—to order the wine? And, by the
way, is there a pier at Bournemouth?”

CHAPTER IV
SHADOWS—WITH OCCASIONAL GLEAMS

Mrs.leastDevar ate her soup in petrified silence. Among the diners were at
two peers and a countess, all of whom she knew slightly; at no
other time during the last twenty years would she have missed such an
opportunity of impressing the company in general and her companion in
particular by waddling from table to table and greeting these acquaintances
with shrill volubility.
But to-night she was beginning to be alarmed. Her youthful protégée was
carrying democratic training too far; it was quite possible that a request to
modify an unconventional freedom of manner where Fitzroy was concerned
would meet with a blank refusal. That threatened a real difficulty in the near
future, and she was much perturbed by being called on to decide instantly
on a definite course of action. Too strong a line might have worse
consequences than a laissez faire attitude. As matters stood, the girl was
eminently plastic, her naturally gentle disposition inducing respect for the
opinions and wishes of an older and more experienced woman, yet there
was a fearlessness, a frank candor of thought, in Cynthia’s character that
awed and perplexed Mrs. Devar, in whom the unending struggle to keep
afloat in the swift and relentless torrent of social existence had atrophied
every sense save that of self-preservation. An open rupture, such as she
feared might take place if she asserted her shadowy authority, was not to be
dreamed of. What was to be done? Small wonder, then, that she should
tackle her fish vindictively.
“Are you angry because Fitzroy is occupying the same hotel as ourselves?”
asked Cynthia at last.
The girl had amused herself by watching the small coteries of stiff and
starched Britons scattered throughout the room; she was endeavoring to
classify the traveled and the untraveled by varying degrees of frigidity. As it
happened, she was wholly wrong in her rough analysis. The Englishman

who has wandered over the map is, if anything, more self-contained than
his stay-at-home brother. He is often a stranger in his own land, and the
dozen most reserved men present that evening were probably known by
name and deed throughout the widest bounds of the empire.
But, though eyes and brain were busy, she could not help noticing Mrs.
Devar’s taciturn mood. That a born gossip, a retailer of personal
reminiscences confined exclusively to “the best people,” should eat stolidly
for five consecutive minutes, seemed somewhat of a miracle, and Cynthia,
as was her habit, came straight to the point.
Mrs. Devar managed to smile, pouting her lips in wry mockery of the
suggestion that a chauffeur’s affairs should cause her any uneasiness
whatsoever.
“I was really thinking of our tour,” she lied glibly. “I am so sorry you
missed seeing Salisbury Cathedral. Why was the route altered?”
“Because Fitzroy remarked that the cathedral would always remain at
Salisbury, whereas a perfect June day in the New Forest does not come
once in a blue moon when one really wants it.”
“For a person of his class he appears to say that sort of thing rather well.”
Cynthia’s arched eyebrows were raised a little.
“Why do you invariably insist on the class distinction?” she cried. “I have
always been taught that in England the barrier of rank is being broken down
more and more every day. Your society is the easiest in the world to enter.
You tolerate people in the highest circles who would certainly suffer from
cold feet if they showed up too prominently in New York or Philadelphia;
isn’t it rather out of fashion to be so exclusive?”
“Our aristocracy has such an assured position that it can afford to unbend,”
quoted the other.
“Oh, is that it? I heard my father say the other day that it has often made
him tired to see the way in which some of your titled nonentities grovel
before a Lithuanian Jew who is a power on the Rand. But unbending is a
different thing to groveling, perhaps?”

Mrs. Devar sighed, yet she gave a moment’s scrutiny to a wine-list brought
by the head waiter.
“A small bottle of 61, please,” she said in an undertone.
Then she sighed again, deprecating the Vanrenen directness.
“Unfortunately, my dear, few of our set can avoid altogether the worship of
the golden calf.”
Cynthia thrust an obstinate chin into the argument.
“People will do things for bread and butter that they would shy at if
independent,” she said. “I can understand the calf proposition much more
easily than the snobbishness that would forbid a gentleman like Fitzroy
from eating a meal in the same apartment as his employers, simply because
he earns money by driving an automobile.”
In her earnestness, Cynthia had gone just a little beyond the bounds of fair
comment, and Mrs. Devar was quick to seize the advantage thus offered.
“From some points of view, Fitzroy and I are in the same boat,” she said
quietly. “Still, I cannot agree that it is snobbish to regard a groom or a
coachman as a social inferior. I have been told that there are several broken-
down gentlemen driving omnibuses in London, but that is no reason why
one should ask one of them to dinner, even though his taste in wine might
be beyond dispute.”
Cynthia had already regretted her impulsive outburst. Her vein of romance
was imbedded in a rock of good sense, and she took the implied reproof
penitently.
“I am afraid my sympathies rather ran away with my manners,” she said.
“Please forgive me. I really didn’t mean to charge you with being a snob.
The absurdity of the statement carries its own refutation. I spoke in general
terms, and I am willing to admit that I was wrong in asking the man to
come here to-night. But the incident happened quite naturally. He
mentioned the fact that he often stayed in the hotel as a boy——”
“Very probably,” agreed Mrs. Devar cheerfully. “We are all subject to ups
and downs. For my part, I was speaking à la chaperon, my sole thought

being to safeguard you from the disagreeable busy-bodies who misconstrue
one’s motives. And now, let us talk of something more amusing. You see
that woman in old rose brocade—she is sitting with a bald-headed man at
the third table on your left. Well, that is the Countess of Porthcawl, and the
man with her is Roger Ducrot, the banker. Porthcawl is a most complaisant
husband. He never comes within a thousand miles of Millicent. She is
awfully nice; clever, and witty, and the rest of it—quite a man’s woman. We
are sure to meet her in the lounge after dinner and I will introduce you.”
Cynthia said she would be delighted. Reading between the lines of Mrs.
Devar’s description, it was not easy to comprehend the distinction that
forbade friendship with Fitzroy while offering it with Millicent, Countess of
Porthcawl. But the girl was resolved not to open a new rift. In her heart she
longed for the day that would reunite her to her father; meanwhile, Mrs.
Devar must be dealt with gently.
Despite its tame ending, this unctuous discussion on social ethics led to
wholly unforeseen results.
The allusion to a possible pier at Bournemouth meant more than Mrs. Devar
imagined, but Cynthia resisted the allurements of another entrancing
evening, went early to her room, and wrote duty letters for a couple of
hours. The excuse served to cut short her share of the Countess’s brilliant
conversation, though Mr. Ducrot tried to make himself very agreeable when
he heard the name of Vanrenen.
Medenham, standing in the hall, suddenly came face to face with Lady
Porthcawl, who was endowed with an unerring eye for minute shades of
distinction in the evening dress garments of the opposite sex. Her
correspondence consisted largely of picture postcards, and she had just
purchased some stamps from the hall porter when she saw Medenham take
a telegram from the rack where it had been reposing since the afternoon. It
was, she knew, addressed to “Viscount Medenham.” That, and her
recollection of his father, banished doubt.
“George!” she cried, with a charming air of having found the one man
whom she was longing to meet, “don’t say I’ve grown so old that you have
forgotten me!”

He started, rather more violently than might be looked for in a shikari
whose nerves had been tested in many a ticklish encounter with other
members of the cat tribe. In fact, he had just been disturbed by coming
across the unexpected telegram, wherein Simmonds assured his lordship
that the rejuvenated car would arrive at the College Green Hotel, Bristol, on
Friday evening. At the very moment that he realized the imminence of
Cynthia’s disappearance into the void it was doubly disconcerting to be
hailed by a woman who knew his world so intimately that it would be folly
to smile vacantly at her presumed mistake.
Some glint of annoyance must have leaped to his eyes, for the lively
countess glanced around with a mimic fright that testified to her skill as an
actress.
“Good gracious!” she whispered, “have I given you away? I couldn’t guess
you were here under a nom de voyage—now, could I?—when that telegram
has been staring at everybody for hours.”
“You have misinterpreted my amazement, Lady Porthcawl,” he said,
spurred into self-possession by the hint at an intrigue. “I could not believe
that time would turn back even for a pretty woman. You look younger than
ever, though I have not seen you for——”
“Oh, hush!” she cried. “Don’t spoil your nice speech by counting years.
When did you arrive in England? Are you alone—really? You’ve grown
quite a man in your jungles. Will you come to the lounge? I want ever so
much to have a long talk with you. Mr. Ducrot is there—the financier, you
know—but I have left him safely anchored alongside Maud Devar—a soft-
furred old pussie who is clawing me now behind my back, I am sure. Have
you ever met her? Wiggy Devar she was christened in Monte, because an
excited German leaned over her at the tables one night and things happened
to her coiffure. And to show you how broad-minded I am, I’ll get her to
bring downstairs the sweetest and daintiest American ingénue you’d find
between here and Chicago, even if you went by way of Paris. Cynthia
Vanrenen is her name, daughter of the Vanrenen. He made, not a pile, but a
pyramid, out of Milwaukees. She is it—a pukka Gibson girl, quite ducky,
with the dearest bit of an accent, and Mamma Devar is gadding around with
her in a mo-car. Do come!”

Medenham was able to pick and choose where he listed in answering this
hail of words.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “but the telegram I have just received affects
all my plans. I must hurry away this instant. When will you be in town?
Then I shall call, praying meanwhile that there may be no Ducrots or
Devars there to blight a glorious gossip. If you bring me up to date as to
affairs in Park Lane I’ll reciprocate about the giddy equator. How—or
perhaps I ought to say where—is Porthcawl?”
“In China,” snapped her ladyship, fully alive to Medenham’s polite evasion
of her blandishments.
“By gad,” he laughed, “that is a long way from Bournemouth. Well, good-
bye. Keep me a date in Clarges Street.”
“Clarges Street is off the map,” she said coldly. “It’s South Belgravia,
verging on Pimlico, nowadays. That is why Porthcawl is in China ... and it
explains Ducrot, too.”
An unconscious bitterness crept into the smooth voice; Medenham, who
hated confidences from the butterfly type of woman, nevertheless pitied her.
“Tell me where you live and I’ll come round and hear all about it,” he said
sympathetically.
She gave him an address, and suddenly smiled on him with a yearning
tenderness. She watched his tall figure as he strode down the hill towards
the town to keep an imaginary appointment.
“He used to be a nice boy,” she sighed, “and now he is a man.... Heigh-ho,
you’re a back number, Millie, dear!”
But she was her own bright self when she returned to the bald-headed
Ducrot and the bewigged Mrs. Devar.
“What a small world it is!” she vowed. “I ran across Medenham in the
hall.”
The banker’s shining forehead wrinkled in a reflective frown.

“Medenham?” he said.
“Fairholme’s eldest son.”
Mrs. Devar chortled.
“Such fun!” she said. “Our chauffeur calls himself George Augustus
Fitzroy.”
“How odd!” agreed Countess Millicent.
“You people speak in riddles. Who or what is odd?” asked Ducrot.
“Oh, don’t worry, but listen to that adorable waltz.” Ducrot’s polished dome
compared badly with the bronzed skin of the nice boy who had grown to be
a man, so her ladyship’s rebellious tongue sought safety in silence, since
she could not afford to quarrel with him.
It is certainly true that the gods make mad those whom they mean to
destroy. Never was woman nearer to a momentous discovery than Mrs.
Devar at that instant, but her active brain was plotting how best to develop a
desirable acquaintance in Roger Ducrot, financier, and she missed utterly
the astounding possibility that Viscount Medenham and George Augustus
Fitzroy might be one and the same person.
In any other conditions Millicent Porthcawl’s sharp wits could scarcely
have failed to ferret out the truth. Even if Cynthia were present it was
almost a foregone conclusion that the girl would have told how Fitzroy
joined her. The luncheon provided for a missing aunt, the crest on the silver
and linen, the style of the Mercury, a chance allusion to this somewhat
remarkable chauffeur’s knowledge of the South Downs and of
Bournemouth, would surely have put her ladyship on the right track. From
sheer enjoyment of an absurd situation she would have caused Fitzroy to be
summoned then and there, if only to see Wiggy Devar’s crestfallen face on
learning that she had entertained a viscount unawares.
But the violins were singing the Valse Bleu, and Cynthia was upstairs,
longing for an excuse to venture forth into the night, and three people, at
least, in the crowded lounge were thinking of anything but the amazing
oddity that had puzzled Ducrot, who did not con his Burke.

Medenham, of course, realized that he had been vouchsafed another narrow
escape. What the morrow might bring forth he neither knew nor cared. The
one disconcerting fact that already shaped itself in the mists of the coming
day was Simmonds tearing breathlessly along the Bath Road during the all
too brief hours between morn and evening.
It is not to be wondered at if he read Cynthia’s thoughts. There is a language
without code or symbol known to all young men and maidens—a language
that pierces stout walls and leaps wide valleys—and that unlettered tongue
whispered the hope that the girl might saunter towards the pier. He turned
forthwith into the public gardens, and quickened his pace. Arrived at the
pier, he glanced up at the hotel. Of girls there were many on cliff and
roadway, girls summer-like in attire, girls slender of waist and airy of tread,
but no Cynthia. He went on the pier, and met more than one pair of bright
eyes, but not Cynthia’s.
Then he made off in a fume to Dale’s lodging, secured a linen dust-coat
which the man happened to have with him, returned to the hotel, and
hurried unseen to his room, an easy matter in the Royal Bath, where many
staircases twine deviously to the upper floors, and brilliantly decorated
walls dazzle the stranger.
He counted on the exigencies of Lady Porthcawl’s toilette stopping a too
early appearance in the morning, and he was right.
At ten o’clock, when Cynthia and Mrs. Devar came out, the men lounging
near the porch were too interested in the girl and the car to bestow a glance
on the chauffeur. Ducrot was there, bland and massive in a golf suit. He
pestered Cynthia with inquiries as to the exact dates when her father would
be in London, and Medenham did not hesitate to cut short the banker’s
awkward gallantries by throwing the Mercury into her stride with a whirl.
“By Jove, Ducrot,” said someone, “your pretty friend’s car jumped off like
a gee-gee under the starting gate.”
“If that chauffeur of hers was mine, I’d boot him,” was the wrathful reply.
“Why? What’s he done?”
“He strikes me as an impudent puppy.”

“Anyhow, he can swing a motor. See that!” for the Mercury had executed a
corkscrew movement between several vehicles with the sinuous grace of a
greyhound.
Now it was Mrs. Devar, and not Cynthia, who leaned forward and said
pleasantly:
“You seem to be in a hurry to leave Bournemouth, Fitzroy.”
“I am not enamored of bricks and mortar on a fine morning,” he answered.
“Well, I have full confidence in you, but don’t embroil us with the police.
We have a good deal to see to-day, I understand.”
Then he heard the strenuous voice addressing Cynthia.
“Millicent Porthcawl says that Glastonbury is heavenly, and Wells a
peaceful dream. I visited Cheddar once, some years ago, but it rained, and I
felt like a watery cheese.”
Lady Porthcawl’s commendation ought to have sanctified Glastonbury and
Wells—Mrs. Devar’s blue-moldy joke might even have won a smile—but
Cynthia was preoccupied; strange that she, too, should be musing of
Simmonds and a hurrying car, for Medenham had told her that the transfer
would take place at Bristol.
She was only twenty-two, and her very extensive knowledge of the world
had been obtained by three years of travel and constant association with her
father. But her lines had always been cast in pleasant places. She had no
need to deny herself any of the delights that life has to offer to youth and
good health and unlimited means. The discovery that friendship called for
discretion came now almost as a shock. It seemed to be a stupid social law
that barred the way when she wished to enjoy the company of a well-
favored man whom fate had placed at her disposal for three whole days.
Herself a blue-blooded American, descendant of old Dutch and New
England families, she was quite able to discriminate between reality and
sham. Mrs. Devar, she was sure, was a pinchbeck aristocrat; Count Edouard
Marigny might have sprung from many generations of French gentlemen,
but her paid chauffeur was his superior in every respect save one—since, to
all appearance, Marigny was rich and Fitzroy was poor.

Curiously enough, the man whose alert shoulders and well-poised head
were ever in view as the car hummed joyously through the pine woods had
taken on something of the mere mechanic in aspect since donning that
serviceable linen coat. The garment was weather-stained. It bore records of
over-lubrication, of struggles with stiff outer covers, of rain and mud—that
bird-lime type of mud peculiar to French military roads in the Alpes
Maritimes—while a zealous detective might have found traces of the black
and greasy deposit that collects on the door handles and side rails of P. L.
M. railway carriages. Medenham borrowed it because of the intolerable
heat of the leather jacket. Its distinctive character became visible when he
viewed it in the June sunshine, and he wore it as a substitute for sackcloth,
since he, no less than Cynthia, recognized that a dangerous acquaintance
was drawing to an end. So Dale’s coat imposed a shield, as it were, between
the two, but the man drove with little heed to the witching scenery that
Dorset unfolded at each turn of the road, and the woman sat distrait, almost
downcast.
Mrs. Devar was smugly complacent. Difficulties that loomed large
overnight were now vague shadows. When the Mercury stopped in front of
a comfortable inn at Yeovil it was she, and not Cynthia, who suggested a
social departure.
“This seems to be the only place in the town where luncheon is provided.
You had better leave the car in charge of a stableman, and join us, Fitzroy,”
she said graciously.
“Thank you, madam,” said Medenham, rousing himself from a reverie, “I
prefer to remain here. The hotel people will look after my slight wants, as I
dislike the notion of anyone tampering with the engine while I am absent.”
“Is it so delicate, then?” asked Cynthia, with a smile that he hardly
understood, since he could not know how thoroughly he had routed Mrs.
Devar’s theories of the previous night.
“No, far from it. But its very simplicity challenges examination, and an
inquisitive clodhopper can effect more damage in a minute than I can repair
in an hour.”

His gruff tone was music in Mrs. Devar’s ears. She actually sighed her
relief, but explained the lapse instantly.
“I do hope there is something nice to eat,” she said. “This wonderful air
makes one dreadfully hungry. When our tour is ended, Cynthia, I shall have
to bant for months.”
The fare was excellent. Under its stimulating influence Miss Vanrenen
forgot her vapors and elected for the front seat during the run to
Glastonbury. Medenham thawed, too. By chance their talk turned to
wayside flowers, and he let the Mercury creep through a high-banked lane,
all ablaze with wild roses and honeysuckle, while he pointed out the blue
field scabious, the pink and cream meadow-sweet, the samphire, the milk-
wort and the columbine, the campions in the cornland, and the yellow
vetchling that ran up the hillside towards one of the wooded “islands”
peculiar to the center of Somerset.
Cynthia listened, and, if she marveled, betrayed no hint of surprise that a
chauffeur should have such a store of the woodman’s craft. Medenham,
aware only of a rapt audience of one, threw disguise to the breeze created
by the car when the pace quickened. He told of the Glastonbury Thorn, and
how it was brought to the west country by no less a gardener than Joseph of
Arimathea, and how St. Patrick was born in the Isle of Avallon, so called
because its apple-orchards bore golden fruit, and how the very name of
Glastonbury is derived from the crystal water that hemmed the isle——
“Please let me intrude one little question,” murmured the girl. “I am very
ignorant of some things. What has ‘Avallon’ got to do with ‘apples’?”
“Ha!” cried Medenham, warming to his subject and retarding speed again,
“that opens up a wide field. In Celtic mythology Avallon is Ynys yr Afallon,
the Island of Apples. It is the Land of the Blessed, where Morgana holds her
court. Great heroes like King Arthur and Ogier le Dane were carried there
after death, and, as apples were the only first-rate fruit known to the
northern nations, a place where they grew in luscious abundance came to be
regarded as the soul-kingdom. Merlin says that fairyland is full of apple
trees——”

“I believe it is,” cried Cynthia, nudging his arm and pointing to an orchard
in full bloom.
Mrs. Devar could hear little and understand less of what they were saying;
but the nudge was eloquent; her steel-blue eyes narrowed, and she thrust her
face between them.
“We mustn’t dawdle on the road, Fitzroy. Bristol is still a long way off, and
we have so much to see—Glastonbury, Wells, Cheddar.”
Though Cynthia was vexed by the interruption she did not show it. Indeed,
she was aware of her companion’s strange reiteration of the towns to be
visited, since Mrs. Devar had already admitted a special weakness in
geography, and during the trip from Brighton to Bournemouth was quite
unable to name a town, a county, or a landmark. But the queer thought of a
moment was dispelled by sight of the ruins of St. Dunstan’s monastery
appearing above a low wall. In front of the broken arches and tottering
walls grew some apple trees so old and worn that no blossom decked their
gnarled branches. Unbidden tears glistened in the girl’s eyes.
“If I lived here I would plant a new orchard,” she said tremulously. “I think
Guinevere would like it, and you say she is buried with her king in St.
Joseph’s Chapel.”
Medenham had suddenly grown stern again. He glanced at her, and then
made great business with brakes and levers, for Mrs. Devar was still
inquisitive.
“There is a fine old Pilgrims’ Inn, the George, in the main street,” he said
jerkily. “I propose to stop there; the entrance to the Abbey is exactly
opposite. In the George they will show you a room in which Henry the
Eighth slept, and I would recommend you to get a guide for half an hour at
least.”
“Must we walk?” demanded Mrs. Devar plaintively.
“Yes, if you wish to see anything. But one could throw a stone over the
chief show places, they are so close together.”

So Cynthia was shown the Alfred Jewel, and Celtic dice-boxes carefully
loaded for the despoiling of Roman legionaries or an unwary Phœnician,
and heard the story of the Holy Grail from the lips of an ancient who lent
credence to the legend by his venerable appearance. Mixed up with the
imposing ruins and the glory of St. Joseph’s Chapel was a visit to the
butcher’s at the corner of the street, where the veteran proudly exhibited a
duck with four feet. He then called Cynthia’s attention to the carved panels
of the George Hotel, and pointed out a fine window, bayed on each
successive story. She had almost forgotten the wretched duck when he
mentioned a two-headed calf which was on view at a neighboring dairy.
Mrs. Devar showed signs of interest, so Cynthia tipped the old man
hurriedly, and ran to the car.
“I shall come here—some other time,” she gasped, and it thrilled her to
believe that Fitzroy understood, though he had heard no word of quadruped
fowl or bicipital monster.
At Wells Medenham pitied her. He bribed a policeman to guard the
Mercury, and when Mrs. Devar saw that more walking was expected of her
she elected to sit in the tonneau and admire the west front of the cathedral.
“Lady Porthcawl tells me it is a masterpiece,” she chirped shrilly, “so I want
to take it in at my leisure.”
Once more, therefore, did Medenham allow himself a half hour of real
abandonment. He warned Cynthia that she must not endeavor to appreciate
the architecture; with the hauteur of conscious genius, Wells refuses to
allow anyone to absorb its true grandeur until it has been seen many times
and in all lights.
So he hied her to the exquisite Lady Chapel, and to the Chapter-House
Stairs, and to Peter Lightfoot’s quaint old clock in the transept. Then, by
some alchemy worked on a lodgekeeper, he led her to the gardens of the
Bishop’s palace, and showed her the real Glastonbury Thorn, and even
persuaded one of the swans in the moat to ring the bell attached to the wall
whereby each morning for many a year the royal birds have obtained their
breakfast.

There is no lovelier garden in England than that of Wells Palace, and
Cynthia was so rapt in it that even Medenham had to pull out his watch and
remind her of dusty roads leading to far-off Bristol.
Mrs. Devar looked so sour when they came from an inspection of one of the
seven wells to which the town owes its name that Cynthia weakened and sat
by her side. Thereupon Medenham made amends for lost time by exceeding
the speed limit along every inch of the run to Cheddar.
Of course he had to crawl through the narrow streets of the little town,
above which the bare crests of the Mendips give such slight promise of the
glorious gorge that cuts through their massiveness from south to north.
Even at the very lip of the magnificent canyon the outlook is deceptive.
Perhaps it is that the eye is caught by the flaring advertisements of the
stalactite caves, or that baser emotions are awakened by the sight of cozy
tea-gardens—of one in particular, where a cascade tumbles headlong from
the black rocks, and a tree-shaded lawn offers rest and coolness after hours
passed in the hot sun.
Be that as it may, “tea” had a welcome sound, and Medenham, who had
lunched on bread and beer and pickles, was glad to halt at the entrance of
the inn that boasted a waterfall in its grounds.
The road was narrow, and packed with chars-à-bancs awaiting their hordes
of noisy trippers. Some of the men were tipsy, and Medenham feared for the
Mercury’s paint. To the left of the hotel lay a spacious yard that looked
inviting. He backed in there when the ladies had alighted, and ran alongside
an automobile on which “Paris” and “speed” were written in characters
legible to the motorist.
A chauffeur was lounging against the stable wall and smoking.
“Hello,” said Medenham affably, “what sort of car is that?”
“A 59 Du Vallon,” was the answer. Then the man’s face lit up with curiosity.
“Yours is a New Mercury, isn’t it?” he cried. “Was that car at Brighton on
Wednesday night?”

“Yes,” growled Medenham; he knew what to expect, and his face was grim
beneath the tan.
“But you were not driving it,” said the other.
“A chap named Dale was in charge then.”
“Oh, is that it? You’ve brought two ladies here just now?”
“Yes.”
“Good! My guv’nor’s on the lookout for ’em. He didn’t tell me so, but he
made sure they hadn’t passed this way when we turned up.”
“And when was that?” asked Medenham, feeling unaccountably sick at
heart.
“Soon after lunch. Ran here from Bristol. There’s a bad bit of road over the
Mendips, but the rest is fine. I s’pose we’ll all be hiking back there to-
night?”
“Most probably,” agreed Medenham, who said least when he was most
disturbed; at that moment he could cheerfully have wrung Count Edouard
Marigny’s neck.

CHAPTER V
A FLURRY ON THE MENDIPS

Itofissport
a contrariety of human nature that men devoted to venturesome forms
should often be tender-hearted as children. Lord Medenham, who
had done some slaying in his time, once risked his life to save a favorite
horse from a Ganges quicksand, and his right arm still bore the furrows
plowed in it by claws that would have torn his spaniel to pieces in a
Kashmir gully had he not thrust the empty barrels of a .450 Express rifle
down the throat of an enraged bear. In each case, a moment’s delay to
secure his own safety meant the sacrifice of a friend, but safety won at such
a price would have galled him worse than the spinning of a coin with death.
Wholly apart from considerations that he was strangely unwilling to
acknowledge, even to his own heart, he now resented Marigny’s cold-
blooded pursuit of an unsuspecting girl mainly because of its unfairness.
Were Cynthia Vanrenen no more to him than the hundreds of pretty women
he would meet during a brief London season he would still have wished to
rescue her from the money-hunting gang which had marked her down as an
easy prey. But he had been vouchsafed glimpses into her white soul. That
night at Brighton, and again to-day in the cloistered depths of the cathedral
at Wells, she had admitted him to the rare intimacy of those who commune
deeply in silence.
It was not that he dared yet to think of a love confessed and reciprocated.
The prince in disguise is all very well in a fairy tale; in England of the
twentieth century he is an anachronism; and Medenham would as soon
think of shearing a limb as of profiting by the chance that threw Cynthia in
his way. Of course, a less scrupulous wooer might have devised a hundred
plausible methods of revealing his identity—was not Mrs. Devar, marriage-
broker and adroit sycophant, ready to hand and purchasable?—and there
was small room for doubt that a girl’s natural vanity would be fluttered into
a blaze of romance by learning that her chauffeur was heir to an old and
well-endowed peerage. But honor forbade, nor might he dream of winning

her affections while flying false colors. True, it would not be his fault if
they did not come together again in the near future. He meant to forestall
any breach of confidence on the part of Simmonds by writing a full
explanation of events to Cynthia herself. If his harmless escapade were
presented in its proper light, their next meeting should be fraught with
laughter rather than reproaches; and then—well, then, he might urge a timid
plea that his repute as a careful pilot during those three memorable days
was no bad recommendation for a permanency!
But now, in a flash, the entire perspective had changed. The Frenchman and
Mrs. Devar, between them, threatened to upset his best-laid plans. It was
one thing to guess the nature of the sordid compact revealed at Brighton; it
was quite another to be brought face to face with its active development at
Cheddar. The intervening hours had disintegrated all his pet theories. In a
word, the difference lay in himself—before and after close companionship
with Cynthia.
It must not be imagined that Medenham indulged in this species of self-
analysis while fetching a pail of water to replace the wastage from the
condenser. He was merely in a very bad temper, and could not trust himself
to speak until he had tended to his belovèd engine.
He determined to set doubt at rest forthwith by the simple expedient of
finding Miss Vanrenen, and seeing whether or not Marigny had waylaid her
already.
“Keep an eye on my machine for a minute,” he said to the guardian of the
Du Vallon. “By the way, is Captain Devar here?” he added, since Devar’s
presence might affect his own actions.
“Oh, you know him, do you?” cried the other. “No, he didn’t come with us.
We left him at Bristol. He’s a bird, the captain. Played some johnny at
billiards last night for a quid, and won. He told the guv’nor this morning
that there is another game fixed for to-day, and you ought to have seen him
wink. It’s long odds again’ the Bristol gent, or I’m very much mistaken.
Yes, I’ll keep any amatoor paws off your car, and off my own as well, you
bet.”

To pass from the stable yard to the garden it was not necessary to enter the
hotel. A short path, shaded by trellis-laden creepers and climbing roses, led
to a rustic bridge over the stream. When Medenham had gone halfway he
saw the two women sitting with Marigny at a table placed well apart from
other groups of tea-drinkers. They were talking animatedly, the Count
smiling and profuse of gesture, while Cynthia listened with interest to what
was seemingly a convincing statement of the fortunate hazard that led to his
appearance at Cheddar. The Frenchman was too skilled a stalker of shy
game to pretend a second time that the meeting was accidental.
Mrs. Devar’s shrill accents traveled clearly across the lawn.
“Just fancy that ... finding James at Bath, and persuading him to come to
Bristol on the chance that we might all dine together to-night! Naughty boy
he is—why didn’t he run out here in your car?”
Count Edouard said something.
“Business!” she cackled, “I am glad to hear of it. James is too much of a
gad-about to earn money, but people are always asking him to their houses.
He is a dear fellow. I am sure you will like him, Cynthia.”
Medenham had heard enough. He noted that the table was gay with cut
flowers, and a neat waitress had evidently been detailed by the management
to look after these distinguished guests; Marigny’s stage setting for his first
decisive move was undoubtedly well contrived. It was delightfully pastoral
—a charming bit of rural England—and, as such, eminently calculated to
impress an American visitor.
Cynthia poured out a cup of tea, heaped a plate with cakes and bread and
butter, and gave some instructions to the waitress. Medenham knew what
that meant. He hurried back by the way he had come, and found that
Marigny’s chauffeur had lifted the bonnet off the Mercury.
“More I see of this engine the more I like it—What’s your h.p.?” asked the
man, who clearly regarded the Mercury’s driver as a brother in the craft.
“38.”

“Looks a sixty, every inch. I wonder if you could hold my car at
Brooklands?”
“Perhaps not, but I may give you some dust to swallow over the Mendips.”
The chauffeur grinned.
“Of course you’d say that, but it all depends on what the guv’nor means to
do. He’s a dare-devil at the wheel, I can tell you, an’ never says a word to
me when I let things rip. But he’s up to some game to-day. He’s fair crazy
about that girl you have in tow—what’s her name? Vanrenen, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Medenham, replacing the hood after a critical glance at the
wires, though he hardly thought that this sturdy mechanic would play any
tricks on him.
“Which of you men is called Fitzroy?” demanded a serving-maid, carrying
a tray.
“I,” said Medenham.
“Here, Miss,” broke in the other, “my name’s Smith, plain Smith, but I can
do with a sup o’ tea as well as anybody.”
“Ask Miss Vanrenen to give you another cup for Count Marigny’s
chauffeur,” said Medenham to the girl.
“Oh, he’s a count, is he?” said the waitress saucily. “My, isn’t he mashed on
the young one?”
“Who wouldn’t be?” declared Smith. “She’s the sort of girl a fellow ’ud
leave home for.”
“Fine feathers go a long way. There’s as good as her in the world,” came the
retort, not without a favorable glance at Medenham.
“Meanwhile the tea is getting cold,” said he.
“Dear me, you needn’t hurry. Her ma is goin’ to write half-a-dozen picture
postcards. But what a voice! The old girl drowns the waterfall.”

The waitress flounced off. She was pretty, and no wandering chauffeur had
ever before turned aside the arrows of her bright eyes so heedlessly.
“Then you have seen Miss Vanrenen?” inquired Medenham, sipping his tea.
“Ra-ther!” said Smith. “Saw her in Paris, at the Ritz, when my people sent
me over there to learn the mechanism of this car. The Count was always
hanging about, and I thought he wanted the old man to buy a Du Vallon, but
it’s all Lombard Street to a china orange that he was after the daughter the
whole time. I don’t blame him. She’s a regular daisy. But you ought to
know best. How do you get on with her?”
“Capitally.”
“Why did Dale and you swop jobs?”
“Oh, a mere matter of arrangement,” said Medenham, who realized that
Smith would blurt out every item of information that he possessed if
allowed to talk.
“He’s a corker, is Dale,” mused the other. “I can do with a pint or two
meself when the day’s work is finished an’ the car safely locked up for the
night. But that Dale! he’s a walkin’ beer-barrel. Lord love a duck! what a
soakin’ he gev’ me in Brighton. Some lah-di-dah toff swaggered into the
garage that evenin’, and handed Dale a fiver—five golden quidlets, if you
please—which my nibs had won on a horse at Epsom. I must say, though,
Dale did the thing handsome—quart bottles o’ Bass opened every ten
minutes. Thank you, my dear”—this to the waitress, “next to beer give me
tea. Now, my boss, bein’ a Frenchy, won’t touch eether—wine an’ corfee
are his specials.”
“He seemed to be enjoying his tea when I caught sight of him in the garden
a little while ago,” said Medenham.
“That’s his artfulness, my boy. You wait a bit. You’ll see something before
you reach Bristol to-night; anyway, you’ll hear something, which amounts
to pretty much the same in the end.”
“They’re just off to the caves,” put in the girl.

“While Mrs. Devar writes her postcards, I suppose?” said Medenham
innocently.
“What! Is that the old party with the hair? I thought she was the young
lady’s mother. She’s gone with them. She looks that sort of meddler—not
half. Two’s company an’ three’s none is my motto, cave or no cave.”
She tried her most bewitching smile on Medenham this time. It was a novel
experience to be the recipient of a serving-maid’s marked favor, and it
embarrassed him. Smith, his mouth full of currant bun, spluttered with
laughter.
“A fair offer,” he cried. “You two dodge outside and see which cave the
aristocracy chooses. Then you can take a turn round the other one. I’ll
watch the cars all right.”
The girl suddenly blushed and looked demure. A sweet voice said quietly:
“We shall remain here half an hour or more, Fitzroy. I thought I would tell
you in case you wished to smoke—or occupy your time in any other way.”
The pause was eloquent: Cynthia had heard.
“Thank you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, affecting to glance at his watch.
He felt thoroughly nonplussed. She would surely think he had been flirting
with this rosy-cheeked servant, and he might never have an opportunity of
telling her that his sole reason for encouraging the conversation lay in his
anxiety to learn as much as possible about Marigny and his associates.
“My, ain’t she smart!” said the girl when Cynthia had gone.
Medenham put his hand in his pocket and gave her half-a-crown.
“They have forgotten to tip you, Gertie,” he said. Without heeding a stare of
astonishment strongly tinctured with indignation, he stooped in unnecessary
scrutiny of the Mercury’s tires. The minx tossed her head.
“Some folks are as grand as their missuses,” she remarked, and went back
to her garden.

But Smith looked puzzled. Medenham, no good actor at any time, had
dropped too quickly the air of camaraderie which had been a successful
passport hitherto. His voice, his manner, the courtly insolence of the maid’s
dismissal, evoked vague memories in Smith’s mind. The square-shouldered,
soldierly figure did not quite fit into the picture, but he seemed to hear that
same authoritative voice speaking to Dale in the Brighton garage.

“You may occupy your time in any way
you wish, Fitzroy,” said Cynthia.
Page
102
The conceit was absurd, of course. Chauffeurs do not swagger through the
world dressing for dinner each night and distributing gold in their leisure
moments. But Smith’s bump of inquisitiveness was well developed, as the
phrenologists say, and he was already impressed by the fact that no firm
could afford to send out for hire a car like Medenham’s.
“Funny thing,” he said at last. “I seem to have met you somewhere or other.
Who do you work for?”
“Myself.”

Medenham caught the note of bewilderment, and was warned. He
straightened himself with a smile, though it cost him an effort to look
cheerful.
“Have a cigarette?” he said.
“Don’t mind if I do. Thanks.” Then, after a pause, and some puffing and
tasting: “Sorry, old man, but this baccy ain’t my sort. It tastes queer. What is
it? Flor de Cabbagio? Here, take one of mine!”
Medenham, in chastened mood, accepted a “five a penny” cigarette, and
saw Smith throw away the exquisite brand that Sevastopolo, of Bond Street,
supplied to those customers only who knew the price paid by connoisseurs
for the leaf grown on one small hillside above the sun-steeped bay of
Salonika.
“Yes,” he agreed, bravely poisoning the helpless atmosphere, “this is better
suited to the occasion.”
“A bit of all right, eh? I can’t stand the Count’s cigarettes eether—French
rubbish, you know. An’ the money they run into—well, there!”
“But if he is a rich man——”
“Rich!” Smith exploded with merriment. “If he had what he owes he might
worry along for a year or so, but, you mark my words, if he doesn’t—Well,
it’s no business of mine, only just keep your eyes open. You’re going
through with this tour?”
“I—believe so,” said Medenham slowly—and thus he took the great
resolution which till that moment was dim in his mind.
“In that case we’ll be having a jaw some other time, and then, mebbe, we’ll
both be older an’ wiser.”
Notwithstanding the community of taste established by Smith’s weeds, the
man was still furtively racking his brains to account for certain
discrepancies in his new acquaintance’s bearing and address. Medenham’s
hands, for instance, were too well kept. His boots were of too good a
quality. His reindeer driving gloves, discarded and lying on the front seat,
were far too costly. The disreputable linen coat might hide many details, but

not these. Every now and then Smith wanted to say “sir,” and he wondered
why.
Medenham was sure that at the back of Smith’s head lay some scheme,
some arranged trick, some artifice of intrigue that would find its
opportunity between Cheddar and Bristol. The distance was not great—
perhaps eighteen miles—by a fairly direct second-class road, and on this
fine June evening it was still safe to count on three long hours of daylight. It
was doubly irritating, therefore, to think that by his own lack of diplomacy
he had almost forfeited Smith’s confidence. Twice had the man been on the
very brink of revelation, for he was one of those happy-go-lucky beings not
fitted for the safeguarding of secrets, yet on each occasion his tongue
faltered in subconscious knowledge that he was about to betray his master’s
affairs.
Feeling that Dale would have managed this part of the day’s adventures far
better than himself, Medenham took his seat and touched the switch.
“We have to make Bristol by seven o’clock, so I shall pull out in front; I
suppose Count Marigny will give the ladies the road?” he remarked
casually.
Smith was listening to the engine.
“Runs like a watch, don’t it?” was his admiring cry.
“And almost as quietly, so you heard what I said.”
“Oh, I hear lots, but I reckon it a good plan to keep my mouth shut,”
grinned the other.
“Exactly what you have failed to do,” thought Medenham, though he
nodded pleasantly, and, with a “So long!” passed out of the yard. Smith
went to the exit and looked after him. The man’s face wore a good-humored
sneer. It was as though he said:
“You wait a bit, my dandy shuffer—you ain’t through with his Countship
yet—not by any manner o’ means.”
And Medenham did wait, till nearly seven o’clock. He saw Cynthia and her
companions come out of Gough’s Cave and enter Cox’s. These fairy

grottoes of nature’s own contriving were well worthy of close inspection, he
knew. Nowhere else in the world can stalactites that droop from the roof,
stalagmites that spring from the floor, be seen in such perfection of form
and tint. But he fretted and fumed because Cynthia was immured too long
in their ice-cold recesses, and when, at last, she reappeared from the second
cavern and halted near a stall to purchase some curios, impatience mastered
him, and he brought the car slowly on until she turned and looked at him.
He raised his cap.
“The gorge is the finest thing in Cheddar, Miss Vanrenen,” he said. “You
ought to see it while the light is strong.”
“We are going now,” she answered coldly. “Monsieur Marigny will take me
to Bristol, and you will follow with Mrs. Devar.”
He did not flinch from her steadfast gaze, though those blue eyes of hers
seemed definitely to forbid any expression of opinion. Yet there was a
challenge in them, too, and he accepted it meekly.
“I was hoping that I might have the pleasure of driving you this evening,”
he said. “The run through the pass is very interesting, and I know every
inch of it.”
He fancied that she was conscious of some mistake, and eager to atone if in
the wrong.
She hesitated, yielded almost, but Mrs. Devar broke in angrily:
“We have decided differently, Fitzroy. I have some few postcards to
dispatch, and Count Marigny has kindly promised to run slowly up the hill
until we overtake him.”
“Yes, you ought to have waited in the yard of the inn for orders,” said the
ever-smiling Marigny. “My car can hardly pass yours in this narrow road.
Back a bit to one side, there’s a good fellow, and, when we have gone, pull
up to the door. Come, Miss Vanrenen. I am fierce to show you the paces of
a Du Vallon.”
The concluding sentences were in French, but Count Edouard spoke
idiomatic English fluently and with a rather fascinating accent.

Cynthia, slightly ruffled by her own singular lack of purpose, made no
further demur. The three walked off down the hill, and Medenham could
only obey in a chill rage that, were Marigny able to gauge its intensity,
might have given him “furiously to think.”
In a few minutes the Du Vallon scurried by. Smith was driving, and there
was a curious smirk on his red face as he glanced at Medenham. Cynthia sat
in the tonneau with the Frenchman, who drew her attention to the limestone
cliffs in such wise that she did not even see the Mercury as she passed.
Medenham muttered something under his breath, and reversed slowly back
to the inn. He consulted his watch.
“I’ll give the postcard writer ten minutes—then I shall jar her nerves badly,”
he promised himself.
Those minutes were slow-footed, but at last he closed the watch with a
snap. He called to a waitress visible at the end of a long passage. The girl
happened to be his friend of tea-time.
“Would you like to earn another half crown?” he asked.
She had wit enough to grasp essentials, and it was abundantly clear that this
man was not her lawful quarry.
“Yes—sir,” she said.
“Take it, then, and tell the elderly lady belonging to my party—she is
somewhere inside—that Fitzroy says he cannot wait any longer. Use those
exact words—and be quick!”
The girl vanished. An irate yet dignified Mrs. Devar came out.
“Do I understand——” she began wrathfully.
“I hope so, madam. Unless you get in at once I intend going to Bristol, or
elsewhere, without you.”
“Or elsewhere?” she gasped, though some of her high color fled under his
cold glance.
“Precisely. I do not intend to abandon Miss Vanrenen.”

“How dare you speak to me in this manner, you vulgar person?”
For answer Medenham set the engine going.
“I said ‘At once,’” he replied, and looked Mrs. Devar squarely in the eyes.
She had her fair share of that wisdom of the serpent which is indispensable
to evildoers, and had learnt early in life that whereas many men say they
will do that which they really will not do if put to the test, other men, rare
but dominant, can be trusted to make good their words no matter what the
cost. So she accepted the unavoidable; quivering with indignation, she
entered the car.
“Drive me to the post-office,” she said, with as much of acid repose as she
could muster to her aid.
Medenham seemed to be suddenly afflicted with deafness. After negotiating
a line of vehicles, the Mercury leaped past the caves of Gough and Cox as
though the drip of lime-laden water within those amazing depths were
reeling off centuries in a frenzy of haste instead of measuring time so
slowly that no appreciable change has been noted in the tiniest stalactite
during fifty years. Mrs. Devar then grew genuinely alarmed, since even a
designing woman may be a timid one. She bore with the pace until the car
seemed to be on the verge of rushing full tilt against a jutting rock. She
could endure the strain no longer, but stood up and screamed.
Medenham slackened speed. When the curving road opened sufficiently to
show a clear furlong ahead, he turned and spoke to the limp, shrieking
creature clinging to the back of his seat.
“You are not in the slightest danger,” he assured her, “but if you wish it I
will drop you here. The village is barely half a mile away. Otherwise,
should you decide to remain, you must put up with a rapid speed.”
“But why, why?” she almost wailed. “Have you gone mad, to drive like
that?”
“Again I pledge my word that there is no risk. I mean to overtake Miss
Vanrenen before the light fails—that is all.”
“Your conduct is positively outrageous,” she gasped.

“Please yourself, madam. Do you go, or stay?”
She collapsed into the comfortable upholstery with a gesture of impotent
despair. Medenham was sure she would not dare to leave him. What
wretched project she and Marigny had concocted he knew not, but its
successful outcome evidently depended on Mrs. Devar’s safe arrival in
Bristol. Moreover, it was a paramount condition that he should be delayed
at Cheddar, and his chief interest lay in defeating that part of the
programme. Without another word, he released the brakes, and the car sped
onward.
Now they were plunging into a magnificent defile shadowed by sheer cliffs
that on the eastern side rose to a height of five hundred feet. Fluttering rock
pigeons circled far up in the azure riband that spanned the opposing
precipices. From many a towering pinnacle, carved by the ages into
fantastic imageries of a castle, a pulpit, a lion, or a lance, came the loud,
clear calling of innumerable jack-daws. It was dark and gloomy, most
terrifying to Mrs. Devar, down there on the twining road where the car
boomed ever on like some relentless monster rushing from its lair. But the
Cheddar gorge, though majestic and awe-inspiring, is not of great extent.
Soon the valley widened, the road took longer sweeps to round each
frowning buttress, and at last emerged, with a quality of inanimate
breathlessness, on to the bleak and desolate tableland of the Mendips.
At this point, had Cynthia been there, Medenham would have stopped for a
while, so that she might admire the far-flung panorama of the “island valley
of Avallon” that stretched below the ravine. Out of the green pastures in the
middle distance rose the ruined towers of Glastonbury. The purple and gold
of Sedgemoor, relieved by the soft outlines of the Polden hills, the grim
summits of Taunton Dean and the Blackdown range, the wooded Quantocks
dipping to the Severn, and the giant mass of Exmoor bounding the far
horizon,—these great splashes of color, softened and blended by belts of
farmland and the blue smoke of clustering hamlets, formed a picture that
not even Britain’s storehouse of natural beauty can match too often to sate
the eyes of those who love a charming landscape.
He had, as it were, jealously guarded this vista all day, said not a word of it,
even when Cynthia and he discussed the route, so that it might come at last

in one supreme moment of revelation. And now that it was here, Cynthia
was hidden somewhere in the gray distance, and Medenham was frowning
at a flying strip of white road, with his every faculty intent on exacting the
last ounce of power from the superb machine he controlled.
The miles rolled beneath, yet there was no token of the Du Vallon that was
to “run slowly up the hill” until overtaken by the industrious writer of
postcards. At the utmost, the French car was given some twelve or thirteen
minutes’ start, which meant seven or eight miles to a high-powered
automobile urged forward with the determination Medenham himself was
displaying. Marigny’s chauffeur, therefore, must have dashed through that
Titanic cleft in the limestone at a speed utterly incompatible with his
employer’s excuse of sightseeing. Of course, it would be an easy matter for
Marigny to enlist Miss Vanrenen’s sympathies in the effort of a first-rate
engine to conquer the adverse gradient. She would hardly realize the rate of
progress, and, from where she was seated, the speed indicator would be
invisible unless she leaned forward for the express purpose of reading it.
Medenham was sure that the Mercury would catch the Du Vallon long
before Bristol was reached, but when the last ample fold of the bleak
plateau spread itself in front, and his hunter’s eyes could discern no cloud of
dust lingering in the still air where the road dipped over the horizon, he
began to doubt, to question, to solve grotesque problems that were
discarded ere they had well taken shape.
Oddly enough, there came no more expostulation from Mrs. Devar. Like the
majority of nervous people, she was quelled by the need of placing
complete trust in one who understood his work. While Medenham was still
searching the sky-line for signs of the vanished car, she did show some
interest in his quest. He felt, since he could not see, that she half rose and
looked over his head, bent low behind the partial shelter afforded by a glass
screen. Then she settled back in the seat, and drew a rug comfortably
around her knees. For some reason, she was strangely content.
The incident supplied food for active thought. So she felt safe! That which
she dreaded as the result of a too strenuous pursuit could not now happen!
Then what was it? Medenham swept aside the fantasy that Mrs. Devar knew
the country well enough to be able to say precisely when and where she
might be sure of his failure to snatch Cynthia from that hidden evil the

nature of which he could only guess at. Her world was the artificial one of
hotels, and shops, and numbered streets—in the real world, of which the
lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no meager sample, she was a
profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton equipped with atrophied senses.
But she blundered badly in composing herself so cozily for the remainder of
the run to Bristol. Medenham had dwelt many months at a time in lands
where just such simple indications of mood on the part of man or beast had
meant to him all the difference between life and death. So now, if ever, he
became doubly alert; his eyes were strained, eager, peering; his body still as
the wild creatures which he knew to be skulking unseen behind many a rock
and grass tuft passed on the way.
This desolate land, given over to stones interspersed with patches of wiry
grass on which browsed some hardy sheep, resembled a disturbed ocean
suddenly made solid. It was not level, but ran in long, almost regular
undulations. In the trough between two of these rounded ridges the road
bifurcated, the way to Bristol trending to the left, and a less important
thoroughfare glancing off to the right.
There was no sign-post, but a child could scarce have erred if asked to
choose the track that led to a big town. Medenham, having consulted the
map earlier in the day, swung to the left without hesitation. The car literally
flew up the next incline, and the dark lines of trees and hedges in the
distance proved that tilled land was being neared. Now he was absolutely
sure that he had managed, somehow, to miss the Du Vallon—unless, indeed,
its redoubtable mechanism was of a caliber he had not yet come across in
the highways and byways of Europe.
With him, to decide was to act. The Mercury slowed up so promptly that
Mrs. Devar became alarmed again.
“What is it?—a tire gone?” she cried.
“No, I am on the wrong road—that is all.”
“But there is no other. That turning we passed was a mere lane.”
The car stopped where his watchful glance noted a carpet of sand left by the
last shower of rain. He sprang out and examined the marks of recent traffic.
Marigny’s vehicle carried non-skid covers with studs arranged in peculiar

groups, and their imprint was plain to be seen. But they had followed that
road once only. It was impossible to determine off-hand whether they had
come or gone, but, if they came from Bristol, then most certainly they had
not returned.
Medenham took nothing for granted. Dusk was advancing, and he must
make no mistake at this stage. He ran the Mercury slowly ahead, not taking
his gaze off the telltale signs. At last he found what he was looking for. The
broad scars left by a heavy cart crossed the studs, and had crossed after the
passage of the car. Thus he eliminated the vagaries of chance. Marigny had
not taken the road to Bristol—he must be on the other one—since no cart
was in sight.
Medenham backed and turned. Mrs. Devar, of course, grew agitated.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
Medenham resolved to end this farce of pretense, else he would not be
answerable for the manner of his speech.
“I mean to find Miss Vanrenen,” he said. “Pray let that suffice for the hour.
Any further explanation you may require can be given at Bristol and in her
presence.”
Mrs. Devar began to sob. He heard her, and of all things that he hated it was
to become the cause of a woman’s tears. But his lips closed in a thin seam,
and he drove fast to the fork in the roads. Another halt here, and the briefest
scrutiny showed that his judgment had not erred. The Du Vallon had passed
this point twice. If it came from Bristol in the first instance it had gone now
to some unfamiliar wilderness that skirted the whole northeastern slopes of
the Mendips.
He leaped back to the driving seat, and Mrs. Devar made one more
despairing effort to regain control of a situation that had slipped from her
grasp nearly an hour ago.
“Please do be sensible, Fitzroy!” she almost screamed. “Even if he has
made a mistake in a turning, Count Marigny will take every care of Miss
Vanrenen——”

It was useless. She was appealing to a man of stone, and, indeed,
Medenham could not pay heed to her then in any circumstances, for the
road surface quickly became very rough, and it needed all his skill to guide
his highly-strung car over its inequalities without inflicting an injury that
might prove disastrous.
His only consolation was provided by the knowledge that the risk to a stout
Mercury was as naught compared with the tortures endured by a French-
built racer, with its long wheel-base and low chassis. After a couple of miles
of semi-miraculous advance his respect for Smith’s capability as a driver
increased literally by leaps and bounds.
But the end was nearer than he thought. On reaching the top of one of those
seemingly interminable land-waves, he saw a blurred object in the hollow.
Soon he distinguished Cynthia’s fawn-colored dust cloak, and his heart
throbbed exultantly when the girl fluttered a handkerchief to show that she,
too, had seen.
Mrs. Devar rose and clutched the back of the seat behind him.
“I apologize, Fitzroy,” she piped tremulously. “You were right. They have
lost their way and met with some accident. How glad I am that I did not
insist on your making straight for Bristol!”
Her unparalleled impudence won his admiration. Such a woman, he
thought, was worthy of a better fate than that which put her in the position
of a bought intriguer. But Cynthia was near, waving her hands gleefully, and
executing a nymph-like thanksgiving dance on a strip of turf by the
roadside, so Medenham’s views of Mrs. Devar’s previous actions were
tempered by conditions extraordinarily favorable to her at the moment.
She seemed to be aware instinctively of the change in his sentiments
wrought by sight of Cynthia. It was in quite a friendly tone that she cried:
“Count Edouard is there; but where is his man?... Something serious must
have happened, and the chauffeur has been sent to obtain help.... Oh, how
lucky we hurried, and how clever of you to find out which way the car
went!”

CHAPTER VI
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S VAGARIES

Cynthia, notwithstanding that spirited pas seul, was rather pale when
Medenham stopped the car close beside her. She had been on
tenterhooks during the past quarter of an hour—there were silent moments
when she measured her own slim figure against the natty Count’s in half-
formed resolution to take to her heels along the Cheddar Road.
At first, she had enjoyed the run greatly. Although Dale spoke of Smith as a
mechanic, the man was a first-rate driver, and he spun the Du Vallon along
at its best speed. But the change from good macadam to none soon made
itself felt, and Cynthia was more troubled than she cared to show when the
French flier came to a standstill after panting and jolting alarmingly among
the ruts. Marigny’s excited questions evoked only unintelligible grunts from
Smith; for all that, the irritating truth could not be withheld—the petrol tank
was empty; not only had the chauffeur forgotten to fill it that morning, but,
by some strange mischance, the supply usually held in reserve had been left
at Bristol!
The Frenchman was very angry with Smith, and Smith was humbly
apologetic. The pair must have acted convincingly, because each knew to a
nicety how soon a gallon of petrol would vaporize in the Du Vallon’s six
cylinders. Having taken the precaution to measure that exact quantity into
the tank before leaving Cheddar, they were prepared for a breakdown at any
point within a few hundred yards of the precise locality where it occurred.
Cynthia, being generous-minded, tried to make little of the mishap. By
taking that line she strove to reassure herself.
“Fitzroy is always prepared for emergencies,” she said. “He will soon catch
up with us. But what a road! I didn’t really notice it before. Surely this
cannot be the only highway between Bristol and Cheddar?—and in
England, too, where the roads are so perfect!”

“There are two roads, but this is the nearest one,” explained the glib-
tongued Count, seemingly much relieved by the prospect of Fitzroy’s early
arrival. “You don’t deserve to be pulled out of a difficulty so promptly,
Smith,” he went on, eying the chauffeur sternly.
“There’s a village not very far ahead, sir,” said the abashed Smith.
“Oh, never mind! We must wait for Miss Vanrenen’s car.”
“Wait?” inquired Cynthia. “What else can we do?”
“I take it he meant to walk to some village, and bring a stock of spirit.”
“Oh, dear! I hope no such thing will be necessary.”
From that half hint of latent and highly disagreeable developments dated
Cynthia’s uneasiness. She accepted Marigny’s suggestion that they should
stroll to the top of the slight hill just descended, whence they would be able
to watch their rescuer’s approach from a considerable distance—she even
remembered to tell him to smoke—but she answered his lively sallies at
random, and agreed unreservedly with his voluble self-reproach.
The obvious disuse of the road, a mere lane providing access to sheep
inclosures on the hills, caused her no small perplexity, though she saw fit
not to add to her companion’s distress by commenting on it. In any other
circumstances she would have been genuinely alarmed, but her well-
established acquaintanceship with the Count, together with the apparently
certain fact that Fitzroy and Mrs. Devar were coming nearer each second,
forbade the tremors that any similar accident must have evoked if, say, they
were marooned on some remote mountain range of the continent, and no
friendly car was speeding to their aid.
The two halted on the rising ground, and one of them, at least, gazed
anxiously into the purple shadows now mellowing the gray monotony of the
plateau. The point where the Du Vallon left the main road was invisible
from where they stood. Marigny had laid his plans with skill, so his
humorous treatment of their plight was not marred by any lurking fear of
the Mercury’s unwelcome appearance.

“What a terrible collapse this would be if I were running away with you,
Miss Cynthia,” he said slyly. “Let us imagine a priest waiting in some
ancient castle ten miles away, and an irate father, or a pair of them, starting
from Cheddar in hot pursuit.”
“My imagination fails me there, Monsieur Marigny,” she replied, and the
shade of emphasis on his surname showed that she was fully aware of the
boundary crossed by the “Miss Cynthia,” an advance which surprised her
more than the Frenchman counted on. “At present I am wholly absorbed in
a vain effort to picture an automobile somewhere down there in the
gathering mists; still, it must arrive soon.”
Then Marigny put forth a tentative claw.
“I hate to tell you,” he said, “mais il faut marcher quand le diable est aux
trousses.[A] I am unwillingly forced to believe that your chauffeur has taken
the other road.”
“The other road!” wailed Cynthia in sudden and most poignant foreboding.
It was then that she first began to estimate her running powers.
“Yes, there are two, you know. The second one is not so direct——”
“If you think that, your man had better go at once to the village he spoke of.
Is it certain that he will obtain petrol there?”
“Almost certain.”
“Really, Monsieur Marigny, I fail to understand you. Why should you
express a doubt? He appeared to be confident enough five minutes ago. He
was ready to start until we prevented him.”
That the girl should yield to slight panic was precisely what Count Edouard
desired. True, Cynthia’s sparkling eyes and firm lips were eloquent of keen
annoyance rather than fear, but Marigny was an adept in reading the danger
signals of beauty in distress, and he saw in these symptoms the heralds of
tears and fright. His experience did not lead him far astray, but he had not
allowed for racial difference between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon.
Cynthia might weep, she might even attempt to run, but in the last resource
she would face him with dauntless courage.

“I assure you I would not have had this thing happen on any account,” he
said in a voice that vibrated with sympathy. “Indeed, I pray your pity in my
own behalf, Miss Vanrenen. After all, it is I who suffer the agony of failure
when I meant only to please. You will reach Bristol this evening, a little
late, perhaps, but quite safely, and I hope that you will laugh then at the
predicament which now looks so ill-starred.”
His seeming sincerity appeased her to some extent. In rapid swing back to
the commonplace, she affected to laugh.
“It is not so serious, after all,” she said, with more calmness than she felt.
“Just for a moment you threw me off the rails by your lawyer-like
vagueness.”
Drawing a little apart, she looked steadily back along the deserted road.
“I see nothing of my car,” she murmured at last. “It will soon be dusk. We
must take no more chances. Please send for that benzine right away.”
Smith was dispatched forthwith on what he knew to be a fool’s errand,
since both he and Marigny were practically sure of their ground. The
nearest petrol was to be found at Langford, two miles along the Bristol road
from the fork, and four miles in the opposite direction to that taken by
Smith, who, when he returned empty-handed an hour later, must make
another long journey to Langford. The Du Vallon was now anchored
immovably until eleven o’clock, and it was well that the girl could not
realize the true nature of the ordeal before her, or events might have taken
an awkward twist.
The Frenchman meant no real harm by his rascally scheme, for Cynthia
Vanrenen, daughter of a well-known American citizen, was not to be wooed
and won in the fashion that commended itself to unscrupulous lovers in by-
gone days. Yet his design blended subtlety and daring in a way that was
worthy of ancestors who had ruffled it at Versailles with the cavaliers of old
France. He trusted implicitly to the effect of a somewhat exciting adventure
on the susceptible feminine heart. The phantom of distrust would soon
vanish. She would yield to the spell of a night scented with the breath of
summer, languorous with soft zephyrs, a night when the spirit of romance
itself would emparadise the lonely waste, and a belated moon, “like to a

silver bow new-bent in heaven,” would lend its glamor to a sky already
spangled with glowing sapphires.
In such a night, all things were possible.
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her
love
To come again to Carthage.
Marigny had indeed arranged a situation worthy of his nurturing among the
decadents of Paris. He believed that in these surroundings an
impressionable girl would admit him to a degree of intimacy not to be
attained by many days of prosaic meetings. At the right moment, when his
well-bribed servant was gone to Langford, he would remember a bottle of
wine and some sandwiches stored in the car that morning to provide the
luncheon that he might not obtain at a wayside inn. Cynthia and he would
make merry over the feast. The magnetism that had never yet failed him in
affairs of the heart would surely prove potent now at this real crisis in his
life. Marriage to a rich woman could alone snatch him from the social
abyss, and the prospect became doubly alluring when it took the guise of
Cynthia. He would restore her to a disconsolate chaperon some time before
midnight, and he was cynic enough to admit that if he had not then
succeeded in winning her esteem by his chivalry, his unobtrusive
tenderness, his devoted attentions—above all, by his flow of interesting talk
and well-turned epigram—the fault would be his own, and not attributable
to adverse conditions.
It was not surprising, therefore, that he failed to choke back the curse quick
risen to his lips when the throb of the Mercury’s engine came over the crest
of the hill. Never was mailed dragon more terrible to the beholder, even in
the days of knight-errantry. In an instant his well-conceived project had
gone by the board. He saw himself discredited, suspected, a skulking plotter
driven into the open, a self-confessed trickster utterly at the mercy of some
haphazard question that would lay bare his pretenses and cover his
counterfeit rhapsody with ridicule.

If Cynthia had heard, and hearing understood, it is possible that a great
many remarkable incidents then in embryo would have passed into the
mists of what might have been. For instance, she would not have deigned to
notice Count Edouard Marigny’s further existence. The next time she met
him he would fill a place in the landscape comparable to that occupied by a
migratory beetle. But her heart was leaping for joy, and her cry of
thankfulness quite drowned in her ears the Frenchman’s furious oath.
Mrs. Devar, having had time to gather her wits, made a gallant attempt to
retrieve her fellow-conspirator’s shattered fortunes.
“My dearest Cynthia,” she cried effusively, “do say you are not hurt!”
“Not a bit,” was the cheerful answer. “It is not I, but the car, that is out of
commission. Didn’t you see me do the Salomé act when you were thrown
on the screen?”
“Ah! the car has broken down. I do not wonder—this fearful road——”
“The road seems to have strayed out of Colorado, but that isn’t the trouble.
We are short of petrol. Please give some to Monsieur Marigny, Fitzroy.
Then we can hurry to Bristol, and the Count must pick up his chauffeur on
the way.”
Without more ado, she seated herself by Mrs. Devar’s side, and Marigny
realized that he had been robbed of a golden opportunity. No persuasion
would bring Cynthia back into the Du Vallon that evening; it would need
the exercise of all his subtle tact to induce her to re-enter it at any time in
the near future.
He strove to appear at his ease, even essayed a few words of congratulation
on the happy chance that brought the Mercury to their relief, but the
imperious young lady cut short his limping phrases.
“Oh, don’t let us waste these precious minutes,” she protested. “It will be
quite dark soon, and if there is much more of this wretched track——”
Medenham broke in at that. Mrs. Devar’s change of front had caused him
some grim amusement, but the discovery of Marigny’s artifice roused his
wrath again. It was high time that Cynthia should be enlightened, partly at

least, as to the true nature of the “accident” that had befallen her; he had
already solved the riddle of Smith’s disappearance.
“The road to Bristol lies behind you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said.
“One of the roads,” cried the Frenchman.
“No, the only road,” persisted Medenham. “We return to it some two miles
in the rear. Had you followed your present path much farther you could not
possibly have reached Bristol to-night.”
“But there is a village quite near. My chauffeur has gone there for petrol.
Someone would have told us of our mistake.”
“There is no petrol to be bought at Blagdon, which is a mere hamlet on the
downs. Anyhow, here are two gallons—ample for your needs—but if your
man is walking to Blagdon you will be compelled to wait till he returns,
Monsieur Marigny.”
Though Medenham did not endeavor to check the contemptuous note that
crept into his voice, he certainly ought not to have uttered those two
concluding words. Had he ransacked his ample vocabulary of the French
language he could scarcely have hit upon another set of syllables offering
similar difficulties to the foreigner. It was quite evident that his accurate
pronunciation startled the accomplices. Each arrived at the same
conclusion, though by different channels; this man was no mere chauffeur,
and the fact rendered his marked hostility all the more significant.
Nevertheless, for the moment, Marigny concealed his uneasiness: by a
display of good humor he hoped to gloss over the palpable absurdity of his
earlier statements to Cynthia.
“I seem to have bungled this business very badly,” he said airily. “Please
don’t be too hard on me. I shall make the amende when I see you in Bristol.
Au revoir, chères dames! Tell them to keep me some dinner. I may not be so
very far behind, since you ladies will take some time over your toilette, and
I shall—what do you call it—scorch like mad after I have found that
careless scoundrel, Smith.”

Cynthia had suddenly grown dumb, so Mrs. Devar tried once more to relax
the tension.
“Do be careful, Count Edouard,” she cried; “this piece of road is dreadfully
dangerous, and, when all is said and done, another half hour is now of no
great consequence.”
“If your chauffeur has really gone to Blagdon, he will not be back under an
hour at least,” broke in Medenham’s disdainful voice. “Unless you wish to
wreck your car you will not attempt to follow him.”
With that he bent over the head lamps, and their radiance fell unexpectedly
on Marigny’s scowling face, since the discomfited adventurer could no
longer pretend to ignore the Englishman’s menace. Still, he was powerless.
Though quivering with anger and balked desire, he dared not provoke a
scene in Cynthia’s presence, and her continued silence already warned him
that she was bewildered if not actually suspicious. He forced a laugh.
“Explanations are like swamps,” he said. “The farther you plunge into them
the deeper you sink. So, good-bye! To please you, Mrs. Devar, I shall crawl.
As for Miss Vanrenen, I see that she does not care what becomes of me.”
Cynthia weakened a little at that. Certainly she wondered why her model
chauffeur chose to express his opinions so bluntly, while Marigny’s
unwillingness to take offense was admirable.
“Is there no better plan?” she asked quickly, for Medenham had started the
engine, and his hand was on the reversing lever.
“For what?” he demanded.
“For extricating my friend from his difficulty?”
“If he likes to come with us, he can leave his car here all night, and return
for it to-morrow.”
“Perhaps——”
“Please do not trouble yourself in the least on my account,” broke in the
Count gayly. “As for abandoning my car, such a stupid notion would never

enter my mind. No, no! I wait for Smith, but you may rely on my
appearance in Bristol before you have finished dinner.”
Though it was no simple matter to back and turn the Mercury in that rough
and narrow road, Medenham accomplished the maneuver with a skill that
the Frenchman appreciated to the full. For the first time he noted the
number when the tail-lamp revealed it.
“X L 4000,” he commented to himself. “I must inquire who the owner is.
Devar or Smith will know where to apply for the information. And I must
also ascertain that fellow’s history. Confound him, and my luck, too! If the
Devar woman has any sense she will keep Cynthia well out of his way until
the other chauffeur arrives.”
As it happened, the “Devar woman” was thinking the same thing at the
same moment, but, being nervous, dared not attempt to utter her thoughts
while the car was creeping cautiously over the ruts and stones. At last, when
the highroad was reached, the pace quickened, and she regained the faculty
of speech.
“We have had a quite eventful day,” she said with an air of motherly
solicitude, turning to the distrait girl by her side. “I am sure you are tired.
What between an extra amount of sightseeing and poor Count Edouard’s
unfortunate mistake, we have been in the car nearly twelve hours.”
“How did Fitzroy discover that we had taken the wrong road?” asked
Cynthia, rousing herself from a perplexed reverie.
“Well, he drove very fast from Cheddar, much too fast, to my thinking,
though the risk has been more than justified by circumstances. Of course, it
is always easy to be wise after the event. At any rate, there being no sign of
your car when we reached the top of a long hill, we—er—we discussed
matters, and decided to explore the byroad.”
“Did you remain long in Cheddar? If Fitzroy hit up the pace, why were you
so far behind?”
“I waited a few minutes to address some postcards. And that reminds me—
Fitzroy sent a most impertinent message by one of the servants——”

“Impertinent!”
“My dear, there is no other word for it—something about going off without
me if I did not start instantly. Really, I shall be glad when Simmonds takes
his place. But there! We must not renew our Bournemouth argument.”
“And he caused a servant in the hotel to speak to you in that manner?”
“Yes—the very girl who waited on us at tea—a pert creature, who seemed
to find the task congenial.”
Mrs. Devar was building better than she knew. Cynthia laughed, though not
with the whole-souled merriment that was music in Medenham’s ears.
“She has been properly punished; I forgot to tip her,” she explained.
“Count Edouard would see to that——”
“He didn’t. I noticed what he paid—out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps I ought
to send her something.”
“My dear Cynthia!”
But dear Cynthia was making believe to be quite amused by a notion that
had just suggested itself. She leaned forward in the darkness and touched
Medenham’s shoulder.
“Do you happen to know the name of the waitress who brought you some
tea at Cheddar?” she asked. “None of us gave her anything, and I hate to
omit these small items. If I had her name I could forward a postal order
from Bristol.”
“There is no need, Miss Vanrenen,” said Medenham. “I handed her—well,
sufficient to clear all claims.”
“You did? But why?”
The temptation to explain that he had never seen the girl before that day
was strong, but he waived it, and contented himself with saying:
“I—er—can’t exactly say—force of habit, I imagine.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”
“No.”
Cynthia subsided into the tonneau.
“Of all the odd things!” she murmured, little dreaming that her chance
question had sent a thrill of sheer delight through Medenham’s every vein.
“What is it now?” inquired Mrs. Devar vindictively, for she detested these
half confidences.
“Oh, nothing of any importance. Fitzroy footed the bill, it seems.”
“Very probably. He must have bribed the girl to be impudent.”
Cynthia left it at that. She wished these people would stop their quarreling,
which threatened to spoil an otherwise perfect day.
The Mercury ran smoothly into ancient Bristol, crossed the Avon by the
pontoon bridge, and whirled up the hill to the College Green Hotel. There,
on the steps, stood Captain James Devar. Obviously, he did not recognize
them, and Medenham guessed the reason—he expected to meet his mother
only, and bestowed no second glance on a car containing two ladies. Indeed,
his first words betrayed sheer amazement. Mrs. Devar cried, “Ah, there you
are, James!” and James’s eyeglass fell from its well-worn crease.
“Hello, mater!” he exclaimed. “But what’s up? Why are you—where is
Marigny?”
“Miles away—the silly man ran short of petrol. Fortunately our car came to
the rescue, or it would have been most awkward, since Miss Vanrenen was
with the Count at the time. Cynthia, you have not met my son. James, this is
Miss Vanrenen.”
The little man danced forward. Like all short and stout mortals, he was
nimble on his feet, and his mother’s voluble outburst warned him of an
unforeseen hitch in the arrangements.
“Delighted, I’m shaw,” said he. “But, by gad, fancy losing poo-aw Eddie!
What have you done with him? Dwiven a stake through him and buwied

him at a cwoss woad?”
Medenham dreaded that the too-faithful Simmonds, car and all, would be
found awaiting their arrival, and it was a decided relief when the only
automobile in sight proved to be the state equipage of some local magnate
dining at the hotel. Cynthia, apparently, had shared his thoughts so far as
they concerned Simmonds.
“I suppose your friend Simmonds will reveal his whereabouts during the
evening,” she said, while disencumbering herself of her wraps. Mrs. Devar
had already alighted, but the girl was standing in the car and spoke over
Medenham’s shoulder.
“Of course, he may not be here,” was the answer, not given too loudly,
since Mrs. Devar had hastened to give details to the perplexed James, and
there was no need to let either of them overhear his words.
“Oh my! What will happen, then?”
“In that event, I should feel compelled to take his place again.”
“But the compulsion, as you put it, tends rather to take you to London.”
“I have changed my mind, Miss Vanrenen,” he said simply.
She tittered. There was just a spice of coquetry in her manner as she
stooped nearer.
“You believe that Simmonds would not have found me in that wretched
lane to-night,” she whispered.
“I am quite sure of it.”
“But the whole affair was a mere stupid error.”
“I am only too glad that I was enabled to put it right,” he said with due
gravity.
“Cynthia,” came a shrill voice, “do make haste, I am positively starving.”
“Guess you’d better lose Simmonds,” breathed the girl, and an
unaccountable fluttering of her heart induced a remarkably high color in her

cheeks when she sped up the steps of the hotel and entered the brilliantly-
lighted atrium.
As for Medenham, though he had carefully mapped out the exact line of
conduct to be followed in Bristol while watching the radiantly white arc of
road that quivered in front of the car during the run from the Mendips, for a
second or two he dared not trust his voice to ask the hall-porter certain
necessary questions. Unaided by the glamor of birth or position he had won
this delightful girl’s confidence. She believed in him now as she would
never again believe in Count Edouard Marigny; what that meant in such a
moment, none can tell but a devout lover. Naturally, that was his point of
view; it did not occur to him that Cynthia might already have regretted the
impulse which led her to utter her thoughts aloud. Her nature was of the
Martian type revealed to Swedenborg in one of his philosophic trances.
“The inhabitants of Mars,” said he, “account it wicked to think one thing
and speak another—to wish one thing while the face expresses another.”
Happy Martians, perhaps, but not quite happy Cynthia, still blushing hotly
because of her daring suggestion as to the disposal of Simmonds.
But she was deeply puzzled by the mishap to the Du Vallon. Unwilling to
think evil of anyone, she felt, nevertheless, that Fitzroy (as she called him)
would never have treated both Mrs. Devar and the Frenchman so cavalierly
if he had not anticipated the very incident that happened on the Mendips.
Why did he turn back? How did he really find out what had become of
them? What would Simmonds have done in his stead? A hundred strange
doubts throbbed in her brain, but they were jumbled in confusion before
that more intimate and insistent question—how would Fitzroy interpret her
eagerness to retain him in her service?
Meanwhile, the Swedish seer’s theory of Martian speech and thought acting
in unity was making itself at home on the pavement in front of the hotel.
Medenham learnt from the hall-porter that a motor-car had reached Bristol
from London about five o’clock. The driver, who was alone, had asked for
Miss Vanrenen, and was told that she was expected but had not yet arrived,
whereupon he went off, saying that he would call after dinner.
“Another shuffer kem a bit later an’ axed the same thing,” went on the man,
“but he didn’t have no car, an’ he left no word about callin’ again.”

“Excellent!” said Medenham. “Now please go and tell Captain Devar that I
wish to see him.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I cannot leave my car. He must be at liberty, as he is in evening dress,
and the ladies will not come downstairs under half an hour.”
Devar soon appeared. His mother had managed to inform him that the
substituted driver was responsible for the complete collapse of Marigny’s
project, and he was puffing with annoyance, though well aware that he must
not display it.
“Well,” said he, strutting up to Medenham and blowing a cloud of cigarette
smoke from his thick lips, “well, what is it, my man?”
For answer, Medenham disconnected a lamp and held it close to his own
face.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked.
Devar, in blank astonishment, affected to screw in his eyeglass more firmly.
“No,” he said, “nor am I particularly anxious to make your acquaintance.
You have behaved wather badly, I understand, but that is of no consequence
now, as Simmonds has bwought his car he-aw——”
“Look again, Devar. We last met in Calcutta, where you swindled me out of
fifty pounds. Unfortunately I did not hear of your presence in South Africa
until you were cashiered at Cape Town, or I might have saved the
authorities some trouble.”
The man wilted under those stern eyes.
“Good gad! Medenham!” he stammered.
Medenham replaced the lamp in its socket.
“I am glad you are not trying any pretense,” he said. “Otherwise I would be
forced to take action, with the most lamentable consequences for you,
Devar. Now, I will hold my hand, provided you obey me implicitly. Send
for your overcoat, go straight to the Central Station, and travel to London

by the next train. You can scribble some excuse to your mother, but, if I
have any cause even to suspect that you have told her who I am, I shall not
hesitate to put the police on your track. You must vanish, and be dumb—for
three months at least. If you are hard up, I will give you some money—
sufficient for a fortnight’s needs—and you can write to me for further
supplies at my London address. Even a rascal like you must be permitted to
live, I suppose, so I risk breaking the law myself by screening you from
justice. Those are my terms. Do you accept them?”
The red face had grown yellow, and the steel-gray eyes that were a heritage
of the Devar family glistened with terror, but the man endeavored to obtain
mercy.
“Dash it all, Medenham,” he groaned, “don’t be too hard on me. I’m goin’
stwaight now—’pon me honor. This chap, Marigny——”
“You fool! I offer you liberty and money, yet you try brazenly to get me to
fall in with your wretched designs against Miss Vanrenen! Which is it to be
—a police cell or the railway station?”
Medenham moved as if to summon the hall-porter. In a very frenzy of fear
Devar caught his arm.
“For Gawd’s sake——” he whispered.
“You go, then?”
“Yes.”
“I am prepared to spare you to the utmost extent. Tell the hall-porter to
bring your overcoat and hat, and to give you a sheet of note-paper and an
envelope. Show me what you write. If it is satisfactory I shall start you with
twenty pounds. You can send from London to-morrow for your belongings,
as your hotel bill will be paid. But remember! One treacherous word from
you and I telegraph to Scotland Yard.”
Mrs. Devar had a bad quarter of an hour when a penciled note from her son
was delivered at her room and she read:
Dear Mater—I hardly had time to tell you that I am obliged to
return to town this evening. Please make my apologies to Miss

Vanrenen and Count Marigny. Yours ever,
J.
Medenham frowned a little at the reference to Cynthia, but something of the
sort was necessary if an open scandal was to be avoided. As for “Dear
Mater,” she was so unnerved that she actually wept. Hard and calculating
though she might be, the man was her son, and the bitter experiences of
twenty years warned her that he had been driven from Bristol by some
ghost new risen from an evil past.
Medenham, however, believed that he had settled one difficulty, and
prepared blithely to tackle another. He ran the car to the garage where he
had arranged to meet Dale.
“Have you seen Simmonds?” was his first question.
“Yes, my l——, yes, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“Just off for a snack, sir, before goin’ to the hotel.”
“Bring him here at once. We will attend to the snack afterwards. No
mistake, now, Dale. He must see no one in the hotel until he and I have had
a talk.”
Simmonds was produced. He saluted.
“Glad to meet you again, my lord,” he said. “I hope I haven’t caused any
trouble by sending that telegram to Bournemouth, but Dale tells me that you
don’t wish your title to be known.”
“Forget it,” said Medenham. “I have done you a good turn, Simmonds—are
you prepared to do me one?”
“Just try me, sir.”
“Put your car out of commission. Stick a pin through the earth contact of
your magneto and jam it against a cylinder, or something of the sort. Then
go to Miss Vanrenen and tell her how sorry you are, but you must have
another week at least to pull things straight. She will not be vexed, and I

guarantee you against any possible loss. To put the best face on affairs, you
had better remain in Bristol a few days at my expense. Of course, it is
understood that I deputize for you during the remainder of the tour.”
Simmonds, no courtier, grinned broadly, and even Dale winked at the North
Star; Medenham had steeled himself against such manifestations of crude
opinion—his face was impassive as that of a graven image.
“Of course I’ll oblige you in that way, my lord. Who wouldn’t?” came the
slow reply.

CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN CYNTHIA TAKES HER OWN LINE

When the Mercury, shining from Dale’s attentions, halted noiselessly
opposite the College Green Hotel on the Saturday morning, Count
Edouard Marigny was standing there; the Du Vallon was not in evidence,
and its owner’s attire bespoke other aims than motoring, at any rate for the
hour.
Evidently he was well content with himself. A straw hat was set on the back
of his head, a cigarette stuck between his lips, his hands were thrust into his
trousers pockets, and his feet were spread widely apart. Taken altogether, he
had the air of a man without a care in the world.
He smiled, too, in the most friendly fashion, when Medenham’s eyes met
his.
“I hear that Simmonds is unable to carry out his contract,” he said
cheerfully.
“You are mistaken, a second time, monsieur,” said Medenham.
“Why, then, are you here this morning?”
“I am acting for Simmonds. If anything, my car is slightly superior to his,
while I may be regarded as an equally competent driver, so the contract is
kept in all essentials.”
Marigny still smiled. The Frenchman of mid-Victorian romance would have
shelved this point by indulging in “an inimitable shrug”; but nowadays
Parisians of the Count’s type do not shrug—with John Bull’s clothing they
have adopted no small share of his stolidness.
“It is immaterial,” he said. “I have sent my man to offer him my Du Vallon,
and Smith will go with him to explain its humors. You, as a skilled motorist,
understand that a car is of the feminine gender. Like any other charming

demoiselle, it demands the exercise of tact—it yields willingly to gentle
handling——”
Medenham cut short the Count’s neatly turned phrases.
“Simmonds has no need to avail himself of your courtesy,” he said. “As for
the rest, give me your address in Paris, and when next I visit the French
capital I shall be delighted to analyze these subtleties with you.”
“Ah, most admirable! But the really vital question before us to-day is your
address in London, Mr. Fitzroy.”
Marigny dwelt on the surname as if it were a succulent oyster, and, in the
undeniable surprise of the moment, Medenham was forced to believe that
“Captain” Devar, formerly of Horton’s Horse, had dared all by telling his
confederate the truth, or some part of the truth. The two men looked
squarely at each other, and Marigny did not fail to misinterpret the dubious
frown on Medenham’s face.
He descended a step or two, and crossed the pavement leisurely, dropping
his voice so that it might not reach the ears of a porter, laden with the
ladies’ traveling boxes, who appeared in the doorway.
“Why should we quarrel?” he asked, with an engaging frankness well
calculated to reassure a startled evildoer. “In this matter I am anxious to
treat you as a gentleman. Allons, donc! Hurry off instantly, and tell
Simmonds to bring the Du Vallon here. Leave me to explain everything to
Miss Vanrenen. Surely you agree that she ought to be spared the
unpleasantness of a wrangle—or, shall we say, an exposure? You see,” he
continued with a trifle more animation, and speaking in French, “the game
is not worth the candle. In a few hours, at the least, you will be in the hands
of the police, whereas, by reaching London to-night, you may be able to
pacify the Earl of Fairholme. I can help, perhaps. I will say all that is
possible, and my testimony ought to carry some weight.”
Medenham was thoroughly mystified. That the Frenchman was not yet
aware of his identity was now clear enough, though, with Devar’s probable
duplicity still running in his mind, he could not solve the puzzle presented
by this vaunted half-knowledge.

Again the other attributed his perplexity to anything except its real cause.
“I am willing to befriend you,” he urged emphatically. “You have acted
foolishly, but not criminally, I hope. In your anxiety to help a colleague you
forgot the fine distinction which the law draws between meum and
tuum——”
“No,” said Medenham, turning to the porter. “Put the larger box on the
carrier, and strap the other on top of it—the locks outwards. Then you will
find that they fit exactly.”
“Don’t be a headstrong idiot,” muttered the Count, with a certain heat of
annoyance making itself felt in his patronizing tone. “Miss Vanrenen will
come out at any minute——”
Medenham glanced at the clock by the side of the speed indicator.
“Miss Vanrenen is due now unless she is being purposely detained by Mrs.
Devar,” he commented dryly.
“But why persist in this piece of folly?” growled Marigny, to whose
reluctant consciousness the idea of failure suddenly presented itself. “You
must realize by this time that I know who owns your car. A telegram from
me will put the authorities on your track, your arrest will follow, and Miss
Vanrenen will be subjected to the gravest inconvenience. Sacré nom d’un
pipe! If you will not yield to fair means I must resort to foul. It comes to
this—you either quit Bristol at once or I inform Miss Vanrenen of the trick
you have played on her.”
Medenham turned and picked up from the seat the pair of stout driving-
gloves which had caught Smith’s inquiring eye by reason of their quality
and substance. He drew on the right-hand glove, and buttoned it. When he
answered, he spoke with irritating slowness.
“Would it not be better for all concerned that the lady in whose behalf you
profess to be so deeply moved should be permitted to continue her tour
without further disturbance? You and I can meet in London, monsieur, and I
shall then have much pleasure in convincing you that I am a most peaceable
and law-abiding person.”

“No,” came the angry retort. “I have decided. I withdraw my offer to
overlook your offense. At whatever cost, Miss Vanrenen must be protected
until her father learns how his wishes have been disregarded by a couple of
English bandits.”
“Sorry,” said Medenham coolly.
He alighted in the roadway, as the driving seat was near the curb. A glance
into the vestibule of the hotel revealed Cynthia, in motor coat and veil,
giving some instructions, probably with regard to letters, to a deferential
hall-porter. Walking rapidly round the front of the car, he caught Marigny’s
shoulder with his left hand.
“If you dare to open your mouth in Miss Vanrenen’s presence, other than by
way of some commonplace remark, I shall forthwith smash your face to a
jelly,” he said.
A queer shiver ran through the Frenchman’s body, but Medenham did not
commit the error of imagining that his adversary was afraid. His grip on
Marigny’s shoulder tightened. The two were now not twelve inches apart,
and the Englishman read that involuntary tension of the muscles aright, for
there is a palsy of rage as of fear.
“I have some acquaintance with the savate,” he said suavely. “Please take
my word for it, and you will be spared an injury. A moment ago you offered
to treat me like a gentleman. I reciprocate now by being willing to accept
your promise to hold your tongue. Miss Vanrenen is coming.... What say
you?”
“I agree,” said Marigny, though his dark eyes blazed redly.
“Ah, thanks!” and Medenham’s left hand busied itself once more with the
fastening of the glove.
“You understand, of course?” he heard, in a soft snarl.
“Perfectly. The truce ends with my departure. Meanwhile, you are acting
wisely. I don’t suppose I shall ever respect you so much again.”
“Now, you two—what are you discussing?” cried Cynthia from the porch.
“I hope you are not trying to persuade my chauffeur to yield his place to

you, Monsieur Marigny. Once bitten, twice shy, you know, and I would
insist on checking each mile by the map if you were at the wheel.”

“Now, you two—what are you
discussing?”
Page
148
“Your chauffeur is immovable, mademoiselle,” was the ready answer,
though the accompanying smile was not one of the Count’s best efforts.
“He looks it. Why are you vexed, Fitzroy? Can’t you forgive your friend
Simmonds?”

Cynthia lifted those demure blue eyes of hers, and held Medenham’s gaze
steadfast.
“I trust you are not challenging contradiction, Miss Vanrenen?” he said,
with deliberate resolve not to let her slip back thus easily into the rôle of
gracious employer.
She did not flinch, but her eyebrows arched a little.
“Oh, no,” she said offhandedly. “Simmonds told me his misfortunes last
night, and I assumed that you and he had settled matters satisfactorily
between you.”
“As for that,” broke in the Count, “I have just offered my car as a substitute,
but Fitzroy prefers to take you as far as Hereford, at any cost.”
“Hereford! I understood from Simmonds that Mr. Fitzroy would see us
through the remainder of the tour?”
“Monsieur Marigny is somewhat vague in our island topography: you saw
that last evening,” said Medenham.
He smiled. Cynthia, too, glanced from one to the other with a frank
merriment that showed how fully she appreciated their mutual dislike. As
for Marigny, his white teeth gleamed now in a sarcastic grin.
“Adversity is a strict master,” he said, lapsing into his own language again.
“My blunder of yesterday has shown me the need of caution, so I go no
farther than Hereford in my thoughts.”
“It is more to the point to tell us how far you are going in your car,” cried
the girl lightly.
“I, too, hope to be in Hereford to-night. Mrs. Devar says you mean to spend
Sunday there. If that is a fixed thing, and you can bear with me for a few
hours, I shall meet you there without fail.”
“Come, by all means, if your road lies that way; but don’t let us make
formal engagements. I love to think that I am drifting at will through this
land of gardens and apple blossom. And, just think of it—three cathedrals in
one day—a Minster for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with Tintern Abbey

thrown in for afternoon tea. Such a wealth of medievalism makes my head
reel.... I was in there for matins,” and she nodded to the grave old pile
rearing its massive Gothic within a few paces of the hotel. “At high noon
we shall visit Gloucester, and to-night we shall see Hereford. All that within
a short hundred miles, to say nothing of Chepstow, Monmouth, the Wye
Valley! Ah, me! I shall never overtake my correspondence while there are
so many glories to describe. See, I have bought some darling little
guidebooks which tell you just what to say in a letter. What between
judicious extracts and a sheaf of picture postcards scribbled at each place
I’ll try and keep my friends in good humor.”
She produced from a pocket three of the red-covered volumes so familiar to
Americans in Britain—and to Britons themselves, for that matter, when the
belated discovery is made that it is not necessary to cross the Channel in
order to enjoy a holiday—and showed them laughingly to Medenham.
“Now,” she cried, “I am armed against you. No longer will you be able to
paralyze me with your learning. If you say 1269 at Tintern I shall retort with
1387 at Monmouth. When you point out Nell Gwynne’s birthplace in
Hereford, I shall take you to the Haven Inn, where David Garrick was born,
and, if you aren’t very, very good, I shall tell you how much the New Town
Hall cost, and who laid the foundation stone.”
Medenham alone held the key to the girl’s lively mood, and it was a novel
and quite delightful sensation to be thus admitted to the inner shrine of her
emotions, as it were. She was chattering at random in order to smooth away
the awkwardness of meeting him after that whispered indiscretion at their
parting overnight. Here, at least, Marigny was hopelessly at sea—
désorienté, as he would have put it—because he could not possibly know
that Cynthia herself had counseled the disappearance of Simmonds. Indeed,
he attributed her high spirits to mere politeness—to her wish that he should
believe she had forgotten the fiasco on the Mendips.
This imagined salving of his wounded vanity served only to inflame him
the more against Medenham. He was still afire with resentment, since no
Frenchman can understand the rude Saxon usage that enforces submission
under a threat of physical violence. That a man should be ready to defend
his honor—to convince an opponent by endeavoring to kill him—yes, he

accepted without cavil those tenets of the French social code. But the brutal
British fixity of purpose displayed by this truculent chauffeur left him
gasping with indignation. He was quite sure that the man meant exactly
what he had said. He felt that any real departure from the compact wrung
from him by force would prove disastrous to his personal appearance, and
he was sensible of a certain weighing underlook in the Englishman’s eyes
when his seemingly harmless chatter hinted at a change of existing plans as
soon as Hereford was reached.
But that was a mere feint, a preliminary flourish, such as a practiced
swordsman executes in empty air before saluting his opponent. He had not
the slightest intention of testing Medenham’s pugilistic powers just then.
The reasonable probability of having his chief features beaten to a pulp was
not inviting, while the crude efficacy of the notion, in its influence on Miss
Vanrenen’s affairs, was not the least stupefying element in a difficult and
wholly unforeseen situation. He realized fully that anything in the nature of
a scuffle would alienate the girl’s sympathies forever, no matter how strong
a case for interference he might present afterwards. The chauffeur would be
dismissed on the spot, but with the offender would go his own prospect of
winning the heiress to the Vanrenen millions.
So Count Edouard swallowed his spleen, though the requisite effort must
have dissipated some of his natural shrewdness, or he could not have failed
to read more correctly the tokens of embarrassment given by Cynthia’s
heightened color, by her eager vivacity, by her breathless anxiety not to
discuss the substitution of one driver for the other.
Medenham was about to disclaim any intention of measuring his lore
against that in the guidebooks when Mrs. Devar bustled out.
“Awfully sorry,” she began, “but I had to wire James——”
Her eyes fell on Medenham and the Mercury. Momentarily rendered
speechless, she rallied bravely.
“I thought, from what Count Edouard said——”
“Miss Vanrenen has lost faith in me, even in my beautiful automobile,”
broke in Marigny with a quickness that spoiled a pathetic glance meant for
Cynthia.

The American girl, however, was weary of the fog of innuendo and hidden
purpose that seemed to be an appanage of the Frenchman and his car.
“For goodness’ sake,” she cried, “let us regard it as a settled thing that
Fitzroy takes Simmonds’s place until we reach London again. Surely we
have the best of the bargain. If the two men are satisfied why should we
have anything to say against it?”
Cynthia was her father’s daughter, and the attribute of personal dominance
that in the man’s case had proved so effective in dealing with Milwaukees
now made itself felt in the minor question of “transportation” presented by
Medenham and his motor. Her blue eyes hardened, and a firm note rang in
her voice. Nor did Medenham help to smooth the path for Mrs. Devar by
saying quietly:
“In the meantime, Miss Vanrenen, the information stored in those little red
books is growing rusty.”
She settled the dispute at once by asking her companion which side of the
car she preferred, and the other woman was compelled to say graciously
that she really had no choice in the matter, but, to avoid further delay, would
take the left-hand seat. Cynthia followed, and Medenham, still ready to deal
harshly with Marigny if necessary, adjusted their rugs, saw to the safe
disposal of the camera, and closed the door.
At that instant, the hall-porter hurried down the steps.
“Beg pardon, mum,” he said to Mrs. Devar, thrusting an open telegram
between Medenham and Cynthia, “but there’s one word here——”
She snatched the form angrily from his outstretched hand.
“Which one?” she asked.
“The word after——”
“Come round this side. You are incommoding Miss Vanrenen.”
The man obeyed. With the curious fatality which attends such incidents,
even among well-bred people, not a word was spoken by any of the others.
To all seeming, Mrs. Devar’s cramped handwriting might have concealed

some secret of gravest import to each person present. It was not really so
thrilling when heard.
“That is ‘Raven,’ plain enough I should think,” she snapped.
“Thank you, mum. ‘The Raven, Shrewsbury,’” read the hall-porter.
Medenham caught Marigny’s eye. He was minded to laugh outright, but
forebore. Then he sprang into his seat, and the car curled in quick
semicircle and climbed the hill to the left, while the Frenchman, surprised
by this rapid movement, signaled frantically to Mrs. Devar, nodding
farewell, that they had taken the wrong road.
“Not at all,” explained Medenham. “I want you to see the Clifton
Suspension Bridge, which is a hundred feet higher in the air than the
Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” cried Cynthia indignantly. “The next thing you will tell
me is that the Thames is wider than the Hudson.”
“So it is, at an equal distance from the sea.”
“Well, trot out your bridge. Seeing is believing, all the time.”
But Cynthia had yet to learn the exceeding wisdom of Ezekiel when he
wrote of those “which have eyes to see, and see not,” for never was optical
delusion better contrived than the height above water level of the fairylike
structure that spans the Avon below Bristol. The reason is not far to seek.
The mind is not prepared for the imminence of the swaying roadway that
leaps from side to side of that tremendous gorge. On either crest are
pleasant gardens, pretty houses, tree-shaded paths, and the opposing
precipices are so prompt in their sheer fall that the eye insensibly rests on
the upper level and refuses to dwell on the river far beneath.
So Cynthia was charmed but not convinced, and Medenham himself could
scarce believe his recollection that the tops of the towers of the far larger
bridge at Brooklyn would be only twenty-six feet higher than the roadway
at Clifton. Mrs. Devar, of course, showed an utter lack of interest in the
debate. Indeed, she refused emphatically to walk to the middle of the

bridge, on the plea of light-headedness, and Cynthia instantly availed
herself of the few minutes’ tête-à-tête thus vouchsafed.
“Now,” said she, looking, not at Medenham, but at the Titanic cleft cut by a
tiny river, “now, please, tell me all about it.”
“Just as at Cheddar, the rocks are limestone——” he began.
“Oh, bother the rocks! How did you get rid of Simmonds? And why is
Count Marigny mad? And are you mixed up in Captain Devar’s mighty
smart change of base? Tell me everything. I hate mysteries. If we go on at
the present rate some of us will soon be wearing masks and cloaks, and
stamping our feet, and saying ‘Ha! Ha!’ or ‘Sdeath!’ or something equally
absurd.”
“Simmonds is a victim of science. If the earth wire of a magneto makes a
metallic contact there is trouble in the cylinders, so Simmonds is switched
off until he can locate the fault.”
“The work of a minute.”
“It will take him five days at least.”
Then Cynthia did flash an amused glance at him, but he was watching a
small steamer puffing against the tide, and his face was adamant.
“Go on,” she cried quizzically. “What’s the matter with the Count’s
cylinders?”
“He professed to believe that I had stolen somebody’s car, and graciously
undertook to shield me if I would consent to run away at once, leaving you
and Mrs. Devar to finish your tour in the Du Vallon.”
“And you refused?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Very little; he agreed.”
“But he is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to the smiter.”

“I didn’t smite him,” Medenham blurted out.
Cynthia fastened on to the hesitating denial with the hawklike pounce of
some barrister famous for merciless cross-examination of a hostile witness.
“Did you offer to?” she asked.
“We dealt with possible eventualities,” he said weakly.
“I knew it.... There was such a funny look in your eyes when I first saw
you....”
“Funny is the right word. The crisis was rather humorous.”
“Poor man, he only wished to be civil, perhaps—I mean, that is, in lending
his car; and he may really have thought you—you were not a chauffeur—
like Simmonds, or Smith, for example. You wouldn’t have hit him, of
course?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
She caught her breath and peered at him again, and there was a light in her
eyes that would have infuriated Marigny had he seen it. It was well, too,
that Medenham’s head was averted, since he simply dared not meet her
frankly inquisitive gaze.
“You know that such a thing would be horrid for me—for all of us,” she
persisted.
“Yes,” he said, “I feel that very keenly. Thank goodness, the Frenchman felt
it also.”
Cynthia thought fit to skip to the third item in her list.
“Now as to Captain Devar?” she cried. “His mother is dreadfully annoyed.
She hates dull evenings, and the four of us were to play bridge to-night at
Hereford. Why was he sent away?”
“Sent away?” echoed Medenham in mock amazement.
“Oh, come, you knew him quite well. You said so in London. I am not
exactly the silly young thing I look, Mr. Fitzroy, and Count Marigny’s

coincidences are a trifle far-fetched. Both he and Captain Devar fully
understood what they were doing when they arranged to meet in Bristol,
and somebody must have fired a very big gun quite close to the fat little
man that he should be scared off the instant he set eyes on me.”
Then Medenham resolved to end a catechism that opened up illimitable
vistas, for he did not want to lose Cynthia just yet, and there was no
knowing what she might do if she suspected the truth. Although, if the
situation were strictly dissected, Mrs. Devar’s chaperonage was as useful to
him as the lady herself intended it to be to Marigny, there was a vital
difference between the two sets of circumstances. He had been pitchforked
by fate into the company of a charming girl whom he was learning to love
as he had never loved woman before, whereas the members of the money-
hunting gang whose scheme he had accidentally overheard at Brighton were
engaged in a deliberate intrigue, outlined in Paris as soon as Mr. Vanrenen
planned the motor tour for his daughter, and perfected during Cynthia’s
brief stay in London.
So he appealed for her forbearance on a plea that he imagined was sure to
succeed.
“I don’t wish to conceal from you that Captain Devar and I have fallen out
in the past,” he said. “But I am genuinely sorry for his mother, who
certainly does not know what a rascal he is. Don’t ask me for further details
now, Miss Vanrenen. He will not cross your path in the near future, and I
promise to tell you the whole story long before there is any chance of your
meeting him again.”
For some reason, deep hidden yet delicately distinct, Cynthia extracted a
good deal more from that simple speech than the mere words implied. The
air of the downs was peculiarly fresh and strong in the center of the bridge,
a fact which probably accounted for the vivid color that lit her face and
added luster to her bright eyes. At any rate, she dropped the conversation
suddenly.
“Mrs. Devar will be growing quite impatient,” she said, with an admirable
assumption of ease, “and I want to buy some pictures of this pretty toy
bridge of yours. What a pity the light is altogether wrong for a snapshot,

and it is so stupid to use films when one knows that the sun is in the
camera!”
Whereat Medenham breathed freely again, while thanking the gods for the
delightfully effective resources that every woman—even a candid,
outspoken Cynthia—has at her fingers’ ends.
The simplest means of reaching the Gloucester road was to run back past
the hotel, but the goddess of happy chance elected, for her own purposes,
that Medenham should ask a policeman to direct him to Cabot’s Tower, and,
the man having the brain of a surveyor, he was sent through by-streets that
saved a few yards, perhaps, but cost him many minutes in stopping to
inquire the way. Hence, he missed an amazing sight. The merest glimpse of
Count Edouard Marigny’s new acquaintance would surely have pulled him
up, if it did not put an end to the tour forthwith. But that was not to be.
Blissfully unconscious of the fact that the Frenchman was eagerly
explaining to a dignified yet strangely perturbed old gentleman that the car
Number X L 4000—containing a young American lady and her friend, and
driven by a conceited puppy of a chauffeur who suffered badly from tête
montée—had just gone up the hill to the left, Medenham at last reached the
open road, and the Mercury leaped forward as if Gloucester would hardly
wait till it arrived there.
The old gentleman had only that minute alighted from a station cab, and a
question he addressed to the hall-porter led that civil functionary to refer
him to Marigny “as a friend of the parties concerned.”
But the newcomer drew himself up somewhat stiffly when the foreign
personage spoke of Medenham as a “puppy.”
“Before our conversation proceeds any farther I think I ought to tell you
that I am the Earl of Fairholme and that Viscount Medenham is my son,” he
said.
Marigny looked so blank at this that the Earl’s explanation took fresh shape.
“I mean,” he went on, perceiving that his hearer was none the wiser, “I
mean that the chauffeur you allude to is Viscount Medenham.”

Marigny, though born on the banks of the Loire, was a Southern Frenchman
by descent, and the hereditary tint of olive in his skin became prominent
only when his emotions were aroused. Now the pink and white of his
complexion was tinged with yellowish-green. Never before in his life had
he been quite so surprised—never.
“He—he said his name was Fitzroy,” was all he could gasp.
“So it is—the dog. Took the family name and dropped his title in order to
go gallivanting about the country with this young person.... An American, I
am told—and with that detestable creature, Mrs. Devar! Nice thing! No
wonder Lady Porthcawl was shocked. May I ask, sir, who you are?”
Lord Fairholme was very angry, and not without good reason. He had
traveled from London at an absurdly early hour in response to the urgent
representations of Susan, Lady St. Maur, to whom her intimate friend,
Millicent Porthcawl, had written a thrilling account of the goings-on at
Bournemouth. It happened that the Countess of Porthcawl’s bedroom
overlooked the carriage-way in front of the Royal Bath Hotel, and, when
she recovered from the stupor of recognizing Medenham in the chauffeur of
the Vanrenen equipage, she gratified her spite by sending a lively and
wholly distorted version of the tour to his aunt.
The letter reached Curzon Street during the afternoon, and exercised a
remarkably restorative effect on the now convalescent lover of forced
strawberries. Lady St. Maur ordered her carriage, and was driven in a jiffy
to the Fairholme mansion in Cavendish Square, where she and her brother
indulged in the most lugubrious opinions as to the future of “poor George.”
They assumed that he would fall an easy prey to the wiles of a “designing
American.” Neither of them had met many citizens of the United States,
and each shared to the fullest extent the common British dislike of every
person and every thing that is new and strange, so they had visions of a
Countess of Fairholme who would speak in the weird tongue of Chicago,
whose name would be “Mamie,” who would call the earl “poppa number
two,” and prefix every utterance with “Say,” or “My land!”
Both brother and sister had laughed many a time at the stage version of a
Briton as presented in Paris, but they forgot that the average Englishman’s
conception of the average American is equally ludicrous in its blunders. In

devising means “to save George” they flew into a panic. Lady St. Maur
telegraphed a frantic appeal to Lady Porthcawl for information, but “dear
Millicent” took thought, saw that she was already sufficiently committed,
and caused her maid to reply that she had left Bournemouth for the
weekend.
A telegram to the hotel manager produced more definite news. Cynthia,
providing against the receipt of any urgent message from her father, had
given the College Green Hotel as her address for the night; but this
intelligence arrived too late to permit of the Earl’s departure till next
morning. Lady Porthcawl’s hint that the “devoted George was traveling
incognito” prevented the use of wire or post. If the infatuated viscount were
to be brought to reason there was nothing for it but that the Earl should
hurry to Bristol by an early train next morning. He did hurry, and arrived
five minutes too late.
Marigny, of course, saw that lightning had darted from a summer sky. If the
despised chauffeur had proved such a tough opponent, what would happen
now that he turned out to be a sprig of the aristocracy? He guessed at once
that the Earl of Fairholme appraised Cynthia Vanrenen by the Devar
standard. He knew that five minutes in Cynthia’s company would alter this
doughty old gentleman’s views so greatly that his present fury would give
place to idolatry. No matter what the cost, they two must not meet, and it
was very evident that if Hereford were mentioned as the night’s rendezvous,
the Earl would proceed there by the next train.
What was to be done? He decided promptly. Lifting his hat, and offering
Lord Fairholme his card, he made up his mind to lie, and lie speciously,
with circumstantial detail and convincing knowledge.
“I happened to meet the Vanrenens in Paris,” he said. “Business brought me
here, and I was surprised to see Miss Vanrenen without her father. You will
pardon my reference to your son, I am sure. His attitude is explicable now.
He resented my offer of friendly assistance to the young lady. Perhaps he
thought she might avail herself of it.”
“Assistance? What is the matter?”

“She had arranged for a car to meet her here. As it was not forthcoming, she
altered her plans for a tour of Oxford, Kenilworth, and Warwick, and has
gone in Viscount—Viscount——”
“Medenham’s.”
“Ah, yes—I did not catch the name precisely—in your son’s car to
London.”
By this time Lord Fairholme had ascertained the Frenchman’s description,
and he was sufficiently well acquainted with the Valley of the Loire to
recollect the Château Marigny as a house of some importance.
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Comte, if I seemed to speak brusquely at
first,” he said, “but we all appear to be mixed up in a comedy of errors. I
remember now that my son telegraphed from Brighton to say that he would
return to-day. Perhaps my journey from town was unnecessary, and he may
be only engaged in some harmless escapade that is now nearing its end. I
am very much obliged to you, and—er—I hope you will call when next you
are in London. You know my name—my place is in Cavendish Square.
Good-day.”
So Marigny was left a second time on the steps of the hotel, while the cab
which brought the Earl of Fairholme from the railway station took him back
to it.
The Du Vallon came panting from the garage, but the Frenchman sent it
away again. Hereford was no great distance by the direct road, and he had
already determined not to follow the tortuous route devised by Cynthia for
the day’s run. Moreover, he must now reconsider his schemes. The long
telegrams which he had just dispatched to Devar in London and to Peter
Vanrenen in Paris might demand supplements.
And to think of that accursed chauffeur being a viscount! His gorge rose at
that. The thought almost choked him. It was well that the hall-porter did not
understand French, or the words that were muttered by Marigny as he
turned on his heel and re-entered the hotel might have shocked him. And,
indeed, they were most unsuited for the ears of a hall-porter who dwelt next
door to a cathedral.

CHAPTER VIII
BREAKERS AHEAD

Thecurrent
Earl’s title-borrowing from Shakespeare was certainly justified by
events, for Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse, to say
nothing of their masters, were no bad prototypes of the chief actors in this
Bristol comedy.
Simmonds, not knowing who might have it in mind to investigate the latest
defect in his car, decided it would be wise to disappear until Viscount
Medenham was well quit of Bristol. By arrangement with Dale, therefore,
he picked up the latter soon after the Mercury was turned over to
Medenham’s hands; in effect, the one chauffeur took the other on a ’bus-
driver’s holiday. Dale was free until two o’clock. At that hour he would
depart for Hereford and meet his master, with arrangements made for the
night as usual; meanwhile, the day’s programme included a pleasant little
run to Bath and back.
It was a morning that tempted to the road, but both men had risen early, and
a pint of bitter seemed to be an almost indispensable preliminary. From
Bristol to Bath is no distance to speak of, so a slight dallying over the beer
led to an exchange of recent news.
Dale, it will be remembered, was of sporting bent, and he told Simmonds
gleefully of his successful bet at Epsom.
“Five golden quidlets his lordship shoved into me fist at Brighton,” he
chortled. “Have you met Smith, who is lookin’ after the Frenchman’s Du
Vallon? No? Well, he was there, an’ his goggles nearly cracked when he
sawr the money paid—two points over the market price, an’ all.”
“Sometimes one spots a winner by chanst,” observed Simmonds judicially.
“An’ that reminds me. Last night a fella tole me there was a good thing at
Kempton to-day.... Now, what was it?”

Dale instantly became a lexicon of weird-sounding words, for the British
turf is exceedingly democratic in its pronunciation of the classical and
foreign names frequently given to racehorses. His stock of racing lore was
eked out by reference to a local paper; still Simmonds scratched an
uncertain pate.
“Pity, too!” he said at last. “This chap had it from his nevvy, who married
the sister of a housemaid at Beckhampton.”
Dale whistled. Here was news, indeed. Beckhampton! the home of “good
things.”
“Is that where it comes from?”
“Yes. Something real hot over a mile.”
“Can’t you think? Let’s look again at the entries.”
“Wait a bit,” cried Simmonds. “I’ve got it now. Second horse from the top
of the column in to-morrow’s entries in yesterday’s Sportsman.”
Dale understood exactly what the other man meant, and, so long as he
understood, the fact may suffice for the rest of the world.
“Tell you wot,” he suggested eagerly, “when you’re ready we’ll just run to
the station an’ arsk the bookstall people for yesterday’s paper.”
The inquiry, the search, the triumphant discovery, the telegraphing of the
“information” and a sovereign to Tomkinson in Cavendish Square—“five
bob each way” for each of the two—all these things took time, and time
was very precious to Dale just then. Unhappily, time is often mute as to its
value, and Bath is really quite close to Bristol.
The choice secret of the Beckhampton stable was safely launched—in its
speculative element, at any rate—and Dale was about to seat himself beside
Simmonds, when an astonished and somewhat irate old gentleman hooked
the handle of an umbrella into his collar and shouted:
“Confound you, Dale! What are you doing here, and where is your master?”

Dale’s tanned face grew pale, his ears and eyes assumed the semblance of a
scared rabbit’s, and the power of speech positively failed him.
“Do you hear me, Dale?” cried the Earl, that instant alighted from a cab. “I
am asking you where Viscount Medenham is. If he has gone to town, why
have you remained in Bristol?”
“But his lordship hasn’t gone to London, my lord,” stuttered Dale, finding
his voice at last, and far too flustered to collect his wits, though he realized
in a dazed way that it was his duty to act exactly as Viscount Medenham
would wish him to act in such trying circumstances.
And, indeed, many very clever people might have found themselves sinking
in some such unexpected quicksand and be not one whit less bemused than
the miserable chauffeur. Morally, he had given the only possible answer that
left open a way of escape, and he had formed a sufficiently shrewd estimate
of the relations between his master and the remarkably good-looking young
lady whom the said master was serving with exemplary diligence to fear
dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl.
The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a
dour person where servants were concerned, and Salomé did not demand
John the Baptist’s head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of
Fairholme would insist on Dale’s dismissal when he discovered the facts.
Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an unfortunate asked to choose
which bristle of a porcupine he would sit upon.
The mere presence of his lordship in Bristol betokened a social atmosphere
charged with electricity—a phase of the problem that constituted the only
clear item in Dale’s seething brain: it was too much for him; in sudden
desperation he determined to stick to the plain truth.
He had to elect very quickly, for the peppery-tempered Earl would not
brook delay.
“Not gone to London, you say? Then where the devil has he gone to? A
gentleman at the hotel, a French gentleman, who said he had met these—
these persons with whom my son is gadding about the country, told me that
they had left Bristol this morning for London, because a car that was
expected to meet them here had broken down.”

Suddenly his lordship, a county magistrate noted for his sharpness, glanced
at Simmonds. He marched round to the front of the car and saw that it was
registered in London. He waved an accusing umbrella in air.
“What car is this? Is this the motor that won’t go? It seems to have reached
Bristol all right? Now, my men, I must have a candid tale from each of you,
or the consequences may be most disagreeable. You, I presume,” and he
lunged en tierce at Simmonds, “have an employer of some sort, and I shall
make it my business——”
“This is my own car, my lord,” said Simmonds stiffly. He could be stubborn
as any member of the Upper House when occasion served. “Your lordship
needn’t use any threats. Just ask me what you like an’ I’ll answer, if I can.”
Fairholme, by no means a hasty man in the ordinary affairs of life, and only
upset now by the unforeseen annoyances of an unusually disquieting
mission, realized that he was losing caste. It was a novel experience to be
rebuked by a chauffeur, but he had the sense to swallow his wrath.
“Perhaps I ought to explain that I am particularly anxious to see Lord
Medenham,” he said more calmly. “I left London at eight o’clock this
morning, and it is most irritating to have missed him by a few minutes. I
only wish to be assured as to his whereabouts, and, of course, I have no
reason to believe that any sort of responsibility for my son’s movements
rests with you.”
“That’s all right, my lord,” said Simmonds. “Viscount Medenham was very
kind to me last Wednesday. I had a first-rate job, and was on my way to the
Savoy Hotel to take it up, when a van ran into me an’ smashed the
transmission shaft. His lordship met me in Down Street, an’ offered to run
my two ladies to Epsom an’ along the south coast for a day or two while I
repaired damages. I was to turn up here—an’ here I am—but it suited his
arrangements better to go on with the tour, an’ that is all there is to it. A bit
of a joke, I call it.”
“Yes, my lord, that’s hit hexactly,” put in Dale, with a nervous eagerness
that demanded the help of not less than two aspirates.
The Earl managed to restrain another outburst.

“Nothing to cavil at so far,” he said with forced composure. “The only point
that remains is—where is Lord Medenham now?”
“Somewhere between here an’ Gloucester, my lord,” said Simmonds.
“Gloucester—that is not on the way to London!”
No reply; neither man was willing to bell the cat. Finding Simmonds a
tough customer, Fairholme tackled Dale.
“Come, come, this is rather absurd,” he cried. “Fancy my son’s chauffeur
jibbing at my questions! Once and for all, Dale, where shall I find Lord
Medenham to-night?”
There was no escape now. Dale had to blurt out the fatal word:
“Hereford!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, my lord. I’m goin’ there with his lordship’s portmanteaux.”
The head of the Fitzroy clan turned to Simmonds again.
“Will you drive me to Gloucester?” he asked.
“No, my lord. I’m under contract to remain in Bristol five days.”
“Very well. Stop in Bristol, and be d—d to you. Is there any reason why
you should not take me to pick up my son’s belongings? Then Dale and I
can go to Hereford by train. Viscount Medenham is devilish particular about
his linen. If I stick to his shirts I shall meet him sometime to-day, I
suppose.”
Simmonds sought Dale’s counsel by an underlook, but that hapless
sportsman could offer no suggestion, so the other made the best of a bad
business.
“I’ll do that, of course, my lord,” he said with alacrity. “Just grab his
lordship’s dressing-case from that porter and shove it inside,” he went on,
eying Dale fiercely, well knowing that the whole collapse arose from a
cause but too easily traced.

“No, no,” broke in the Earl, whose magisterial experiences had taught him
the wisdom of keeping witnesses apart, “Dale comes with me. I want to sift
this business thoroughly. Put the case in front. We can pile the other luggage
on top of it. Now, Dale, jump inside. Your friend knows where to go, I
expect.”
Thus did two bizarre elements intrude themselves into the natural order of
things on that fine morning in the West of England. The very shortness of
the road between Bristol and Bath apparently offered an insuperable
obstacle to the passage of Simmonds’s car along it, and some unknown
“chap,” whose “nevvy” had married the sister of a Beckhampton
housemaid, became the predominating factor in a situation that affected the
fortunes of several notable people.
For his part, Lord Fairholme gave no further thought to Marigny. It did not
even occur to him it might be advisable to call again at the College Green
Hotel, since Medenham had slept elsewhere, and Hereford was now the
goal. Certainly, the Frenchman’s good fairy might have pushed her good
offices to excess by permitting him to see, careering about Bristol with a
pair of chauffeurs, the man whom he believed to be then on the way to
London. But fairies are unreliable creatures, apt to be off with a hop, skip,
and a jump, and, in any case, Marigny was writing explicit instructions to
Devar, though he would have been far more profitably employed in
lounging outside the hotel.
So everybody was dissatisfied, more or less, the quaking Dale more,
perhaps, than any, and the person who had absolutely no shadow of care on
his soul was Medenham himself, at that moment guiding the Mercury along
the splendid highway that connects Bristol with Gloucester—taking the run
leisurely, too, lest Cynthia should miss one fleeting glimpse of the ever-
changing beauties of the Severn estuary.
During one of these adagio movements by the engine, Cynthia, who had
been consulting a guidebook, leaned forward with a smile on her face.
“What is a lamprey?” she asked.
“A special variety of eel which has a habit of sticking to stones by its
mouth,” said Medenham. Then he added, after a pause: “Henry the First

was sixty-seven years of age when he died, so the dish of lampreys was
perhaps blamed unjustly.”
“You have a good memory,” she retorted.
“Oh, is that in your book, Miss Vanrenen? Well, here is another fact about
Gloucester. Alfred the Great held a Witenagemot there in 896. Do you know
what a Witenagemot is?”
“Yes,” she said, “a smoking concert.”
Mrs. Devar invariably resented these bits of by-play, since she could no
more extract their meaning than if they were uttered in Choctaw.
“Some very good people live in Gloucestershire,” she put in. “There are the
——” She began to give extracts from Burke’s “Landed Gentry,”
whereupon the speedometer index sprang to forty-five, and a noble fifteenth
century tower soon lifted its stone lacework above the trees and spires of
the ancient city.
Cynthia wished to obtain some photographs of old inns, so, when they had
admired the cathedral, and shuddered at the memory of Richard the Third—
who wrote at Gloucester the order to Brackenbury for the murder of the
princes in the Tower of London—and smiled at Cromwell’s mordant wit in
saying that the place had more churches than godliness when told of the
local proverb, “As sure as God’s in Gloucester,” Medenham brought them
to Northgate Street, where the New Inn—which is nearly always the most
antiquated hostelry in an English country-town—supplied a fine example of
massive timberwork, with courtyard and external galleries.
The light was so perfect that he persuaded Cynthia to stand in a doorway
and let him take a picture. During the focusing interval, he suggested that
the day’s route should be varied by leaving the coast road at Westbury and
running through the Forest of Dean, where a secluded hotel in the midst of a
real woodland would be an ideal place for luncheon.
She agreed. Something in his tone told her that Mrs. Devar’s consent to the
arrangement had better be taken for granted. So they sped through the
blossom-laden lanes of Gloucestershire to the leafy depths of the Forest,
and saw the High Beeches, and the Old Beech, and the King’s Walk, and

many of the gorgeous vistas that those twin artists Spring and Summer
etched on the wooded undulations of one of Britain’s most delightful
landscapes; as a fitting sequel to a run through fairyland they lunched at the
Speech House Hotel, where once the skins of daring trespassers on the
King’s preserves were wont to be nailed on the Court House door by the
Verderers.
It was Cynthia who pointed the moral.
“There is always an ogre’s cave near the Enchanted Garden,” she said, “and
those were surely ogerish days when men were flayed alive for hunting the
King’s deer.”
It is not to be wondered at if they dawdled somewhat by the way, when that
way led past Offa’s Dyke, through Chepstow, and Tintern, and Monmouth,
and Symon’s Yat. Indeed, Cynthia’s moods alternated between wide-eyed
enjoyment and sheer regret, for each romantic ruin and charming
countryside not only aroused her enthusiasm but evoked a longing to
remain riveted to the spot. Yet she would not be a woman if there were not
exceptions to this rule, as shall be seen in due course.
Mrs. Devar, perchance tempted by the word “Castle,” quitted the car at
Chepstow, and climbed to the nail-studded oak door of one of the most
perfect examples of a Norman stronghold now extant. Once committed to
the rôle of sightseer, she was compelled to adhere to it, and before the
fourth court was reached, had she known the story, she would have
sympathized with the pilgrim who did not boil the peas in his shoes of
penance. Chepstow Castle is a splendid ruin, but its steep gradients and
rough pavements are not fitted for stout ladies who wear tight boots.
To make matters worse, the feelings of Cynthia’s chaperon soon became as
sore as her toes. The only feature of Marten’s Tower that appealed to her
was its diabolical ingenuity in providing opportunities for that interfering
chauffeur to assist, almost to lift, Cynthia from one mass of fallen masonry
to another. Though she knew nothing of Henry Marten she reviled his
memory. She heard “Fitzroy” telling her wayward charge that the reformer
really hated Charles I. because the King called him “an ugly rascal” in
public, and directed that he should be turned out of Hyde Park; the words
supplied a cue.

“Pity kings are not as powerful nowadays,” she snapped. “The presumption
of the lower orders is becoming intolerable.”
“Unfortunately, Marten retaliated by signing the King’s death warrant,” said
Medenham.
“Of course. What else could one expect from a person of his class?”
“But Sir Henry Marten was a celebrated judge, and the son of a baronet,
and he married a rich widow—these are not the prevalent democratic
vices,” persisted Medenham.
“You must have sat up half the night reading the guidebook,” she cried in
vexation at her blunder.
Cynthia laughed so cheerfully that Mrs. Devar thought she had scored.
Medenham left it at that, and was content. Both he and Cynthia knew that
lack of space forbade indulgence in such minor details of history on the part
of the book’s compiler.
Another little incident heated Mrs. Devar to boiling-point. Cynthia more
than once hinted that, if tired, she might wait for them in the lowermost
court, where a fine tree spread its shade over some benches, but the older
woman persisted in visiting every dungeon and scrambling up every broken
stair. The girl took several photographs, and had reached the last film in a
roll, when the whim seized her to pose Medenham in front of a Norman
arch.
“You look rather like a baron,” she said gleefully. “I wish I could borrow
some armor and take you in character as the gentleman who built this
castle. By the way, his name was Fitz-something-or-other. Was he a
relation?”
“Fitz Osborne,” said Medenham.
“Ah, yes. Fitzroy means King’s son, doesn’t it?”
“I—er—believe so.”
“Well, I can imagine you scowling out of a vizor. It would suit you
admirably.”

“But I might not scowl.”
“Oh, yes, you would. Remember this morning. Just force yourself to think
for a moment that I am Monsieur——”
She stopped abruptly.
“A little more to the left, please—and turn your face to the sun. There, that
is capital.”
“Why should Fitzroy scowl at the recollection of Count Edouard?”
demanded Mrs. Devar, her eyes devouring the telltale blush that suffused
the girl’s face and neck.
“Only because the Count wished to supplant him as our chauffeur,” came
the ready answer.
“I thought Monsieur Marigny’s offer a very courteous one.”
“Undoubtedly. But as I had to decide the matter I preferred to travel in a car
that was at my own disposal.”
Mrs. Devar dared not go farther. She relapsed into a sulky silence. She said
not a word when Cynthia occupied the front seat for the climb through
Chepstow’s High Street, and when the girl turned to call her attention to the
view from the crest of the famous Wyndcliff she was nodding asleep!
Cynthia told Medenham, and there was a touch of regret in her voice.
“Poor dear,” she said in an undertone, “the Castle was too much for her, and
the fresh air has made her drowsy.”
He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and instantly made up his mind to
broach a project that he had thought out carefully since his quarrel with the
Frenchman.
“You mean to stay in Hereford during the whole of to-morrow, Miss
Vanrenen?” he asked.
“Yes. Somehow, I don’t see myself scampering across the map on the
British Sabbath. Besides, I am all behindhand with my letters, and my

father will be telegraphing something emphatic if I don’t go beyond ‘Much
love’ on a picture postcard.”
“Symon’s Yat is exceptionally beautiful, and there is a capital little hotel
there. The Wye runs past the front door, the boating is superb, and there will
be a brilliant moon after dinner.”
“And the answer is?”
“That we could run into Hereford before breakfast, leaving you plenty of
time to attend the morning service at the cathedral.”
Cynthia did not look at him or she would have seen that he was rather
baronial in aspect just then. Sad to relate, they were speeding down the
Wyndcliff gorge without giving it the undisturbed notice it merited.
“I have a kind of notion that Mrs. Devar wouldn’t catch on to the boating
proposition,” she said thoughtfully.
“Perhaps not, but the river takes a wide bend there, and she could see us
from the hotel veranda all the time.”
“Guess it can’t be fixed up, anyhow,” she sighed.
Twice had she lapsed into the idioms of her native land. What, then, was the
matter with Cynthia that she had forgotten her self-imposed resolution to
speak only in that purer English which is quite as highly appreciated in New
York as in London?
It was Saturday afternoon, and they overtook and passed a break-load of
beanfeasters going to Tintern. There is no mob so cruelly sarcastic as the
British, and it may be that the revelers in the break envied the dusty
chauffeur his pretty companion. At any rate, they greeted the passing of the
car with jeers and cat-calls, and awoke Mrs. Devar. It is a weakness of
human nature to endeavor to conceal the fact that you have been asleep
when you are supposed to be awake, so she leaned forward now, and asked
nonchalantly:
“Are we near Hereford?”

“No,” said Cynthia. “We have a long way to go yet.” She paused. “Are you
really very tired?” she added, as an afterthought.
“Yes, dear. The air is positively overpowering.”
There was another pause.
“Ah, well,” sighed the girl, “we shall have a nice long rest when we stop for
tea at—at—what is the name of the place?”
“Symon’s Yat.”
Medenham’s voice was husky. Truth to tell, he was rather beside himself.
He had played for a high stake and had nearly won. Even now the issue
hung on a word, a mere whiff of volition: and if he knew exactly how much
depended on that swing of the balance he might have been startled into a
more earnest plea, and spoiled everything.
“But that will throw us late in arriving at Hereford,” said Mrs. Devar.
“Does it really matter? We shall be there all day to-morrow.”
“No, it is of no consequence, though Count Edouard said he would meet us
there.”
“And I refused to pledge myself to any arrangement. In fact, I would much
prefer that his Countship should scorch on to Liverpool or Manchester, or
wherever he happens to be going.”
“Oh, Cynthia! And he going out of his way to be so friendly and
agreeable!”
“Well, perhaps that was an unkind thing to say. What I mean is that we must
feel ourselves at liberty to depart from a cut-and-dried schedule. Half the
charm of wandering through England in an automobile is in one’s freedom
from timetables.”
Back dropped Mrs. Devar, and Medenham recovered sufficient self-control
to point out to Cynthia her first glimpse of the gray walls that vie with
Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx for pride of place as the most beautiful ruin
in England.

Certainly those old Cistercians knew how and where to build their
monasteries. They had the true sense of beauty, whether in site or design,
and at Tintern they chose the loveliest nook of a lovely valley. Cynthia
silently feasted her vision on each new panorama revealed by the winding
road, and ever the gray Abbey grew more distinct, more ornate, more
completely the architectural gem of an entrancing landscape.
But disillusion was at hand.
Rounding the last bend of the descent, the Mercury purred into the midst of
a collection of horsed vehicles and frayed motors. By some unhappy chance
the whole countryside seemed to have chosen Tintern as a rendezvous that
Saturday. The patrons of a neighboring hotel overflowed into the roadway;
the brooding peace of the dead-and-gone monks had fled before this
invasion; instead of memories of mitered abbots and cowled friars there
were the realities of loud-voiced grooms and porkpie-eating excursionists.
“Please drive on,” whispered Cynthia. “I must see Tintern another time.”
Although Medenham hoped to consume a precious hour or more in showing
her the noble church, the cloisters, the chapter-house, the monks’ parlor, and
the rest of the stone records of a quiet monastic life, he realized to the full
how utterly incongruous were the enthusiastic trippers with their
surroundings. The car threaded their ranks gingerly, and was soon running
free along the tree-shaded road to Monmouth.
Happily, that delightful old town was sufficiently familiar to him in earlier
days that he was now able to supplement the general knowledge of its past
gleaned already by the girl’s reading. He halted in front of the Welsh Gate
on Monnow Bridge, and told her that although the venerable curiosity dates
back to 1270 it is nevertheless the last defensive work in Britain in which
serious preparations were made for civil war, as it was expected that the
Chartists would march from Newport to attack Monmouth Jail in 1839.
“Six hundred years,” mused Cynthia aloud. “If there are sermons in stones
what a history is pent in these!”
“And how greatly it would differ from the accepted versions,” laughed
Medenham.

“Do we never know the truth, then?”
“Oh, yes, if we are actually mixed up in some affair of worldwide
importance, but that is precisely the reason why the actors remain dumb.”
Oddly enough, this was the first of Medenham’s utterances that Mrs. Devar
approved of.
“Evidently you have moved in high society, Fitzroy,” she chimed in.
“Yes, madam,” he said. “More than once, when in a hurry, I have run madly
through Mayfair.”
“Oh, nonsense!” she cried, resenting the studied civility of the “madam”
and ruffled by the quip, “you speak of Mayfair, yet I don’t suppose you
really know where it is.”
“I shall never forget where Down Street is, I assure you,” he said cheerfully.
“And pray, why Down Street in particular?”
“Because that is where I met Simmonds, last Wednesday, and arranged to
take on his job.”
“In your mind, then, it figures as broken-down-street,” cooed Cynthia.
After that the Mercury crossed the Monnow, and Mrs. Devar muttered
something about the mistake one made when one encouraged servants to be
too familiar. But Cynthia was not to be repressed. She was bubbling over
with high spirits, and amused herself by telling Medenham that Henry V.
was born at Monmouth and afterwards won the battle of Agincourt
—“scraps of history not generally known,” she confided to him.
From the back of the car Mrs. Devar watched them with a hawklike
intentness that showed how thoroughly those “forty winks” snatched while
in the Wyndcliff had restored her flagging energies. Though it was absurd to
suppose that Cynthia Vanrenen, daughter of a millionaire, a girl dowered
with all that happy fortune had to give, would so far forget her social
position as to flirt with the chauffeur of a hired car, this experienced
marriage-broker did not fail to realize what a stumbling-block the dreadful
person was in the path of Count Edouard Marigny.

For once in her life, “Wiggy” Devar forced herself to think clearly. She saw
that “Fitzroy” was a man who might prove exceedingly dangerous where a
girl’s susceptible heart was concerned. He had the address and semblance of
a gentleman; he seemed to be able to talk some jargon of history and
literature and art that appealed mightily to Cynthia; worst of all, he had
undoubtedly ascertained, by some means wholly beyond her ken, that she
and the Frenchman were in league. She was quite in the dark as to the cause
of her son’s extraordinary behavior the previous evening, but she was
beginning to suspect that this meddlesome Fitzroy had contrived, somehow
or other, to banish Captain Devar as he had outwitted Marigny on the
Mendips. Talented schemer that she was, she did not believe for a moment
that Simmonds had told the truth at Bristol. She argued, with cold logic, that
the man would not risk the loss of an excellent commission by bringing
from London a car so hopelessly out of repair that it could not be made
available under four or five days. But her increasing alarm centered chiefly
in Cynthia’s attitude. If, by her allusion to a “cut-and-dried schedule,” the
girl implied a design to depart from the tour planned in London, then the
Count’s wooing became a most uncertain thing, since it was manifestly out
of the question that he should continue to waylay them at stopping-places
chosen haphazard during each day’s run.
So Mrs. Devar noted with a malignant eye each friendly glance exchanged
by the couple in front, and listened to the snatches of their talk with a
malevolence that was fanned to fury by their obvious heedlessness of her
presence. She felt that the crisis called for decisive action. There was only
one person alive to whose judgment Cynthia Vanrenen would bow, and
Mrs. Devar began seriously to consider the advisability of writing to Peter
Vanrenen.
If any lingering doubt remained in her mind as to the soundness of this
view, it was dispelled soon after they reached Symon’s Yat. She was sitting
in the inclosed veranda of a cozy hotel perched on the right bank of the Wye
when Cynthia suddenly leaped up, teacup in hand, and looked down at the
river.
“There are the duckiest little yachts I have ever seen skimming about on
that stretch of water,” she cried over her shoulder. “The mere sight of them
makes me taste all the dust I have swallowed between here and London.

Don’t you think it would be real cute to remain here to-night and run into
Hereford to-morrow after an early cup of tea?”
Cynthia need not have taken the trouble to avert her scarlet face from Mrs.
Devar’s inquisitive eyes; indeed, Mrs. Devar herself was glad that her
quick-witted and perhaps quick-tempered young friend had not surprised
the wry smile that twisted her own lips.
“Just as you please, Cynthia,” said she amiably.
Then the girl resolutely crushed the absurd emotion that led her to shirk her
companion’s scrutiny: she was so taken aback by this unexpected
complaisance in a quarter where she was prepared for opposition that she
turned and laid a grateful hand on the other woman’s arm.
“Now that is perfectly sweet of you,” she said softly. “I would just love to
see that river by moonlight, and—and—I fancied you were a bit weary of
the road. It wouldn’t matter if the country were not so wonderful, but when
one has to screw one’s head round quickly or one misses a castle or a prize
landscape, a hundred miles of that sort of thing becomes a strain.”
“This seems to be quite a restful place,” agreed Mrs. Devar. “Have you—er
—told Fitzroy of the proposed alteration in our arrangements?”
Cynthia grew interested in the yachts again.
“No,” she said, “I’ve not mentioned it to him—yet.”
A maid-servant entered, and Cynthia inquired if the hotel could provide
three rooms for her party.
The girl, a pretty Celt of the fair-haired type, said she was sure there was
accommodation.
“Then,” said Cynthia, with what she felt to be a thoroughly self-possessed
air, “please ask my chauffeur if he would like another cup of tea, and tell
him to house the car and have our boxes sent in, as we shall stay here till
half-past eight to-morrow morning.”
Mrs. Devar’s letter to Peter Vanrenen forthwith entered the category of
things that must be done at the earliest opportunity. She wrote it before

dinner, taking a full hour in the privacy of her room to compose its few
carefully considered sentences. She posted it, too, and was confirmed in her
estimate of its very real importance when she saw a muslined Cynthia
saunter out and join “Fitzroy,” who happened to be standing on a tiny
landing-stage near a boathouse.
Yet, so strangely constituted is human nature of the Devar variety, she
would have given half the money she possessed if she could have recalled
that letter an hour later. But His Majesty’s mails are inexorable as fate. A
twopence-ha’penny stamp had linked Symon’s Yat and Paris, and not all
Mrs. Devar’s world-worn ingenuity could sunder that link.

CHAPTER IX
ON THE WYE

Forinnocent
this is what happened. To Mrs. Devar, gazing darkly at Cynthia’s too
discovery of Medenham standing on the tiny quay, came the
Welsh maid, saying:
“Beg pardon, mam, but iss your chauf-feur’s name Fitz-roy?”
“Yes.”
“Then he iss wan-ted on the tel-e-phone from Her-e-ford, mam.”
“There he is, below there, near the river.”
Mrs. Devar smiled sourly at the thought that the interruption was well-
timed, since Medenham was just raising his cap with a fine assumption of
surprise at finding Miss Vanrenen strolling by the water’s edge. The civil-
spoken maid was about to trip off in pursuit of him, when Mrs. Devar
changed her mind. The notion suddenly occurred to her that it would be
well if she intervened in this telephonic conversation, and Fitzroy could still
be summoned a minute later if desirable.
“Don’t trouble,” she cried, “I think that Miss Vanrenen wishes to go
boating, so I will attend to the call myself. Perhaps Fitzroy’s presence may
be dispensed with.”
The felt-lined telephone box was well screened off; as first impressions
might be valuable, she adjusted the receivers carefully over both ears before
she shouted “Hallo!”
“That you, my lord?” said a voice.
“Hallo!—who wants Fitzroy?” she asked in the gruffest tone she could
adopt.
“It’s Dale, my—— But who is talking? Is that you, sir?”

“Go on. Can’t you hear?”
“Not very well, my lord, but I’m that upset.... It wasn’t my fault, but your
lordship’s father dropped on to me at Bristol, an’ he’s here now. What am I
to do?”
“My lordship’s father! What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“Isn’t that Lord—— Oh, dash it, aren’t you Miss Vanrenen’s chauffeur,
Fitzroy?”
“No. This is the Symon’s Yat Hotel. The party is out now, and Fitzroy as
well, but I can tell him anything you wish to say.”
Mrs. Devar fancied that the speaker, whose words thus far had excited her
liveliest curiosity, would imagine that he was in communication with the
proprietors of the hotel. She was not mistaken. Dale fell into the trap
instantly, though, indeed, he was not to be blamed, since he had asked most
earnestly that “Mr. Fitzroy, Miss Vanrenen’s chauffeur” should be brought
to the telephone.
“Well, mam,” he said, “if I can’t get hold of—of Fitzroy—I must leave a
message, as I don’t suppose I’ll have another chanst. I’m his man, I’m Dale;
have you got it?”
“Yes—Dale.”
“Tell him the Earl of Fairholme turned up in Bristol an’ forced me to
explain everything. I couldn’t help it. The old gentleman fell from the
blooming sky, he did. Will you remember that name?”
“Oh, yes: the Earl of Fairholme.”
“Well, his lordship will understand. I mean you must tell Fitzroy what I
said. Please tell him privately. I expect I’ll get the sack anyhow over this
business, but I’m doin’ me best in tryin’ the telephone, so you’ll confer a
favor, mam, if you call Fitzroy on one side before tellin’ him.”
Though the telephone-box was stuffy when the door was closed, Mrs.
Devar felt a cold chill running down her spine.

“I don’t quite understand,” she said thickly. “You’re Dale, somebody’s man;
whose man?”
“His lordship’s. Oh, d—n. Beg pardon, mam, but I’m Fitzroy’s chauffeur.”
It was a glorious night of early summer, yet lightning struck in that little
shut-off section of the hotel.
“Do you mean that you are Viscount Medenham’s chauffeur?” she gasped,
and her hands trembled so much that she could scarce hold the receivers to
her ears.
“Yes’m. Now you’ve got it. But, look here, I daren’t stop another minnit.
Tell his lordship—tell Mr. Fitzroy—that I’ll dodge the Earl in some way an’
remain here. He says he has been tricked, wot between me an’ the
Frenchman, but he means to go back to London to-morrow. Good-by, mam.
You won’t forget—strickly private?”
“Oh, no, I won’t forget,” said Mrs. Devar grimly; nevertheless, she felt
weak and sick, and in her anxiety to rush out into the fresh air she did forget
to hang up the receivers, and the Symon’s Yat Hotel was cut off from the
world of telephones until someone entered the box early next morning.
She was of a not uncommon type—a physical coward endowed with nerves
of steel, but, for once in her life, she came perilously near fainting. It was
bad enough that a money-making project of some value should show signs
of tumbling in ruins, but far worse that she, an experienced tuft-hunter,
should have lived in close companionship with a viscount for four long
days and snubbed him rancorously and without cease. There was no
escaping the net she had contrived for her own entanglement. She had
actually written to Peter Vanrenen that she deemed it her duty as Cynthia’s
chaperon to acquaint him with Simmonds’s defection and the filling of his
place by Fitzroy, “a most unsuitable person to act as Miss Vanrenen’s
chauffeur”—indeed, a young man who, she was sure, “would never have
been chosen for such a responsible position” by Mr. Vanrenen himself.
And Fitzroy was Viscount Medenham, heir to the Fairholme estates, one of
the most eligible young bachelors in the kingdom! Oh, blind and crass that
she had not guessed the truth! The car, the luncheon-basket, the rare wine,
the crest on the silver, the very candor of the wretch in giving his real name,

his instant recognition of “Jimmy” Devar’s mother, the hints of a childhood
passed in Sussex—why, even the aunt he spoke of on Derby Day must be
Susan St. Maur, while Millicent Porthcawl had actually met him in the
Bournemouth hotel!—these and many another vivid index pointed the path
of knowledge to one so well versed as she in the intricacies of Debrett. The
very attributes which she had taken for an impertinent aping of the manners
of society had shouted his identity into her deaf ears time and again. Even
an intelligent West-end housemaid would have felt some suspicion of the
facts when confronted by these piled-up tokens. She remembered noticing
his hands, the quality of his linen, his astonishingly “good” appearance on
the only occasion that she had seen him in evening dress; she almost
groaned aloud when she recalled the manner of her son’s departure from
Bristol, and some imp in her heart raked the burnt ashes of the fire that had
devoured her when she heard why Captain Devar was requested to resign
his commission. Of course, this proud young aristocrat recognized him at
once, and had brushed him out of his sight as one might brush a fly off a
windowpane.
But how was she to act in face of the threatened disaster? Why had not her
son warned her? Did Marigny know, and was that the explanation of his
sheepish demeanor when she and Cynthia were about to enter the car that
morning? Indeed, Marigny’s quiet acceptance of the position was quite as
difficult to understand as her own failure to grasp the significance of all that
happened since noon on Wednesday. This very day, before breakfast, he had
come to her room with the cheering news that information to hand from
London would certainly procure the dismissal of “Fitzroy” forthwith. The
Mercury was registered in the name of the Earl of Fairholme, the obvious
deduction being that his lordship’s chauffeur was careering through
England in a valuable car without a shred of permission; the merest whisper
to Cynthia of this discovery, said the Frenchman, would send “Fitzroy”
packing.
And again, what had Cynthia meant when she referred at Chepstow to the
“Norman baron scowl” with which “Fitzroy” had favored Marigny? Was
she, too, in the secret? Unhappy Mrs. Devar! She glowered at the darkening
Wye, and wriggled on her chair in torture.
“Wass it all right a-bout the tel-e-phone, mam?” said a soft voice at her ear.

She started violently, and the maid was contrite.
“I’m ver-ry sor-ry, mam,” she said, “but I see Mr. Fitz-roy down there on
the riv-er——”
“Where, where?” cried the other, rather to gain time to collect her wits than
to ascertain Medenham’s whereabouts.
The girl pointed.
“In that lit-tle boat, all by its-self, mam,” she said.
“Oh, it was of no importance. By the way,” and Mrs. Devar produced her
purse, “you might tell the people in the office not to pay any attention to the
statements of a man named Dale, if he rings up from Hereford. He is only a
chauffeur, and we shall see him in the morning; perhaps it will be best, if he
asks for Fitzroy again to-night, to tell him to await our arrival.”
“Yess, mam,” and the maid went off, the richer by half-a-crown. Mrs.
Devar’s usual “tip” was a sixpence for a week’s attentions, so it would
demand an abstruse arithmetical calculation to arrive at an exact estimate of
the degree of mental disturbance that led to the present lack of proportion.
Left alone once more, her gaze followed a small skiff speeding upstream
over the placid surface of the silvery Wye; Medenham was rowing, and
Cynthia held the tiller ropes; but Mrs. Devar’s thoughts turned her mind’s
eyes inward, and they surveyed a gray prospect. Dale, the unseen monster
who had struck this paralyzing blow, spoke of “the Frenchman.” Lord
Fairholme had charged both Dale and “the Frenchman” with tricking him.
Therefore, the Earl and Marigny had met at Bristol. If so, and there could be
little doubt of it, Marigny would hardly appear in Hereford, and if she
attempted to telephone to the Green Dragon Hotel, where Cynthia had
engaged rooms, she would not only fail to reach Marigny but probably
reveal to a wrathful Earl the very fact which Dale seemed to have withheld
from him, namely, his son’s address at the moment.
She assumed that Dale knew how to communicate with his master because
Medenham had telegraphed the name of the hotel at Symon’s Yat. Therein
she was right. Medenham wanted his baggage, and, having ascertained that
there was a suitable train, sent instructions that Dale was to travel by it.

This, of course, the man could not do. Lord Fairholme had carried off his
son’s portmanteaux, and had actually hired a room in the Green Dragon
next to that reserved for Cynthia.
Suddenly grown wise, Mrs. Devar decided against the telephone. But there
remained the secrecy of the post-office. What harm if she sent a brief
message to both the Green Dragon and the Mitre Hotels—Marigny would
be sure to put up at one or the other if he were in Hereford—and demand
his advice? She hurried to the drawing-room and wrote:

Remaining Symon’s Yat Hotel to-night. Suppose you are aware
of to-day’s developments. F. is son of gentleman you met in
Bristol. Wire reply.
Devar.
She went to the hotel bureau, but a sympathetic landlady shook her head.
“The post-office is closed. No telegrams can be dispatched until eight
o’clock on Monday,” she said. “But there is the telephone——”
“It is matterless,” said Mrs. Devar, crushing the written forms in her fingers
as though she had reason to believe they might sting her.
She resolved to let events drift now. They had passed beyond her control.
Perhaps a policy of masterly inactivity might rescue her from the tornado
which had swept her off her feet. In any case, she must fight her own
battles, irrespective of the cabal entered into in Paris. Captain James Devar
was an impossible ally; the French Count was a negligible quantity when
compared with an English viscount whose ancestry threw back to the
Conquest and whose estates covered half of a midland shire; but there
remained, active as ever, the self-interest of a poor widow from whose
despairing grasp was slipping a golden opportunity.
“Is it too late?” she asked herself. “Can anything be done? Maud, my dear,
you are up against it, as they say in America. Pull yourself together, and see
if you can’t twist your mistakes to your own advantage.”
Cynthia, meanwhile, was enjoying herself hugely. The placid reaches of the
Wye offered a delightful contrast to the sun-baked roads of Monmouthshire;
and, it may be added, there was enough of Mother Eve in her composition
to render the proceeding none the less attractive because it was
unconventional. Perhaps, deep hidden in her consciousness, lurked a doubt
—but that was successfully stifled for the hour.
Indeed, her wits were trying to solve a minor puzzle. Her woman’s eye had
seen and her quick brain was marveling at certain details in Medenham’s
costume. There are conditions, even in England, in which a flannel suit is
hard to obtain, and the manner of their coming to Symon’s Yat seemed to

preclude the buying of ready-made garments, a solution which would occur
to an American instantly. Yet here was that incomprehensible chauffeur clad
in the correct regalia of the Thames Rowing Club, though Cynthia, of
course, did not recognize the colors.
“How did you manage it?” she asked, wide-eyed and smiling.
“I hunted through the hotels and met a man about my own size who was
just off to town,” he said.
“But—there are gaps.”
“I thought they fitted rather well. In fact, he was slightly the stouter of the
two.”
“Don’t be stupid. The gaps are in your story. Did you borrow or buy?”
“I borrowed. Luckily, he was a decent fellow, and there was no trouble.”
“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.”

“Pity I’m not a circus lady, to balance
myself on your head,” said Cynthia.
Page
209
“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

Itcountry
was a flushed and somewhat breathless Cynthia who ran into the quiet
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 ménage 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 rôle 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

Theremarkable
clouds did not lift until Cynthia was standing in front of that
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 Cæsar 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.

Fitzroy poses as the first Earl of
Chepstow.
Page
263
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 naïve 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.
He did not go straight to Hereford for the best of reasons. He had told
Cynthia of Mrs. Leland’s coming, and had heard of if not from her in
response to his letter. If he rushed off now to intercept the motorists at
Hereford he would defeat the very purpose he had in view, which was to
interpose an effectual shield between the scoundrelly lordling and his prey,
while avoiding any risk of hurting his daughter’s feelings. Moreover, he
was eminently a just man. Hearing from Marigny that Simmonds, the
original cause of all the trouble, was skulking at Bristol, to Bristol he went.
From that starting-point, with his knowledge of Cynthia’s probable route,
he could surely pick up traces of the predatory car at most towns through
which it passed. Moreover, he could choose his own time for joining the
party in front, which by this time he was fully resolved on, either at Chester
or farther north.
Transcending these minor features of a disturbing affair was his self-
confessed fear of Cynthia. In the unfathomed deeps of a father’s love for
such a daughter there is ever an element of fear. Not for all his wealth
would Vanrenen cast a shadow on the unsullied intimacy of their affection.
Therefore, he would be wary, circumspect, ready to accept as most credible
theories which he would scout in any other conditions, quick to discern the
truth, slow to point out wherein an inexperienced girl had erred, but
merciless to the fortune-hunter who had so jeopardized Cynthia’s happiness
and his own.
Hence, his appearance at the Symon’s Yat Hotel seemed to have no more
serious import than a father’s wish to delight his daughter by an unexpected
participation in her holiday. No secret had been made as to the Mercury’s
halting-place that day. Cynthia herself had written the address in the hotel
register, adding a request that letters, if any, were to be forwarded to
Windermere.

By chance, the smiling landlady’s curiosity as to “Fitzroy” raised a new
specter.
“He must be a gentleman,” she said, “because he belongs to the Thames
Rowing Club; he also spoke and acted like one. Why did he employ an
assistant chauffeur? That is most unusual.”
Vanrenen could only explain that arrangements for the tour were made
during his absence in France, so he was not fully posted as to details.
“Oh, they did not intend to remain here on Saturday, but Miss Vanrenen
liked the place, and seemed to be rather taken with the hotel——” whereat
the millionaire nodded his complete agreement—“so Mr. Fitzroy
telegraphed for a man named Dale to come to Hereford. There was some
misunderstanding, however, and Dale only arrived yesterday in the car. He
left by an early train this morning, after doing the garage work.”
Simmonds, candor itself about Medenham, had said no word of the Earl of
Fairholme or of Dale. Marigny, of course, was silent as to the Earl, since it
might have ruined his last faint hope of success had the two perplexed
fathers met; Simmonds’s recent outburst opposed an effectual bar to farther
questioning; so Vanrenen was free to deduce all sorts of possibilities from
the existence of yet another villainous chauffeur.
Unhappily, he availed himself of the opportunity to the full. The fair
countryside and the good food of the March counties made little or no
appeal to him thenceforth. He pined to be in Chester, yet restrained the
impulse that urged a frenzied scurry to the Banks of the Dee, for he was
adamant in his resolve not to seem to have pursued Cynthia, but rather to
have joined her as the outcome of a mere whim after she had met Mrs.
Leland.
The Mercury arrived at Ludlow long before Vanrenen crossed the Wye
Bridge at Hereford. Medenham stopped the car at “The Feathers,” that
famous magpie among British Inns, where Cynthia admired and
photographed some excellent woodcarving, and saw an iron-studded front
door which has shut out revellers and the night on each alternate round of
the clock since 1609, if not longer.

If they hurried over luncheon they were content to dawdle in the
picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old castle, in
which Milton’s “Masque of Comus” was first played on Michaelmas night
of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every
American brain when the citizen of the New World stands in one of these
treasure-houses of history and feels the passing of its dim pageants; when
they stood together in the ruined banqueting hall, Medenham gave play to
his imagination, and strove to reconstruct a scene once spread before the
bright eyes of a maiden long since dead.
“You will please regard yourself,” he said, “as the Lady Alice Egerton,
daughter of the Earl of Bridgwater, Lord President of the Marches of Wales,
who, with her two brothers, was benighted in the Forest of Heywood while
riding to Ludlow to witness her father’s installation in his high office.
Milton was told of her adventures by Henry Lawes, the musician, and he
wrote the ’Masque of Comus’ to delight her and her friends. Have you read
‘Comus’?”
“No,” said Cynthia, almost timidly, for she was beginning to fear this
masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at such
moments.
“Ah, but you shall. It ranks high among the miracles of English poetry
wrought by Milton. Many a mile from Ludlow have I called to mind one of
its incomparable passages:
A thousand phantasies
Begin to throng into my memory—
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows
dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s names
On sands, and shores, and desert
wildernesses.
And now you, the heroine of the masque, must try to imagine that you are
lost in a wild wood represented by a carpet spread here, in the center of the
hall. Seated there on a dais, is your father the Earl, surrounded by his
officers and retainers. Near you are your brothers, Lord Brackley and
Thomas Egerton, so blinded by sprites that they cannot see you, though

keen enough to note the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of other ladies of
high degree bidden to Ludlow from neighboring shires for the merry-
making. And mark you, this is no rude gathering of unlettered squires and
rough men-at-arms. How is it possible that an uncultured throng should
listen rapturously to the noblest performance of the kind that exists in any
language, wherein each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime,
with an uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?”
The sheer wonder in Cynthia’s face warned him that this brief excursion
into the pages of Macaulay had better cease, so he focused his thoughts on
the actual representation of the masque in which he had taken part ten years
ago at Fairholme.
“I must ask you to concede that the lords and ladies, the civic dignitaries
and their wives, for whose amusement Milton spread the pinions of his
genius, were far better equipped to understand his lyric flights than any
similar assemblage that could be collected haphazard in some modern
castle. They did not pretend—they knew. Even you, Lady Alice, could
frame a neat verse in Latin and cap some pleasant jest with a line from
Homer. When Milton dreamed aloud of bathing in the Elysian dew of the
rainbow, of inhaling the scents of nard and cassia, ‘which the musky wings
of the Zepyhr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides,’ they
followed each turn and swoop of his fancy with an active sense of its truth
and beauty. And what a brilliant company! How the red flare of torch and
cresset would flicker on the sheen of silk, the luster of velvet, the polished
brightness of morion and spear. I think I can see those gallant gentlemen
and fine ladies grouped round the players who told of the strange pranks
played by the God of Mirth. Perhaps that same fair Alice, who supplied the
motive of the masque as well as its leading lady, may be linked with you by
stronger ties than those of mere feminine grace——”
Cynthia did not blush: she grew white, but shook her head.
“You cannot tell,” he said. “‘Comus’ was played in Ludlow only fourteen
years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, and I would
remind you that we stocked the new nation in the west with some of the
bluest blood in Britain. Even in this hall there were Puritans whose ascetic

tastes disapproved of Milton’s imageries, of children play-acting, of the
brave show made by the gentry——”
“My mother’s people lived in Pennsylvania for generations,” she broke in
with a strange wistfulness.
“I knew it,” he cried in triumph. “Tell me the names of the first-nighters at
the Milton Theater, Ludlow, on that autumn evening in 1634, and warrant
me to find you an authentic ancestor.”
Cynthia bent a puzzled brow at him.
“After this, I shall apply myself to ‘Comus’ with added comprehension,”
she said. “But—you take my breath away; have you, then, delved so deep in
the mine of English history that you can people ’most every ruined pile in
Britain with the men and women of the dead years?”
He laughed, and colored a little, with true British confusion at having been
caught in an extravagant mood.
“There you lay bare the mummer,” he said. “What clever fellows actors
would be if they grasped the underlying realities of all the fine words they
mouth! No; I quote ‘Comus’ only because on one half-forgotten occasion I
played in it.”
“Where?”
The prompt question took him unaware.
“At Fairholme,” he said.
“Is that another castle?”
“No—merely a Georgian residence.”
“I seem to have heard of it—somewhere—I can’t remember.”
He remembered quite well—was not Mrs. Devar, student of Burke, sitting
in the car at the castle gate?
“Oh, we must hurry,” he said shamefacedly. “I have kept you here too long,
for we have yet to

trace huge forests and unharbour’d
heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
before we see Chester—and Mrs. Leland.”
With that the bubble was pricked, and staid Ludlow became a busy market-
town again, its streets blocked by the barrows of hucksters and farmers’
carts, its converging roads thronged with cattle. At Shrewsbury Medenham
was vouchsafed a gleam of frosty humor by Mrs. Devar’s anxiety lest her
son might have obeyed her earlier injunctions, and kept tryst at “The
Raven” after all. That trivial diversion soon passed. He hoped that Cynthia
would share the front seat with him in the final run to Chester; but she
remained tucked up in the tonneau, and the dread that kept her there was
bitter-sweet to him, since it betrayed her increasing lack of confidence in
herself.
The rendezvous was at the Grosvenor Hotel, and Medenham had made up
his mind how to act long before the red towers of Chester Cathedral glowed
above the city’s haze in the fire of a magnificent sunset. Dale was waiting
on the pavement when the Mercury drew up at the galleried entrance to the
hotel.
Medenham leaped down.
“Good-by, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, holding out his hand. “I can catch an
early train to town by hurrying away at once. This is Dale, who will take
my place. He is thoroughly reliable, and an even more careful driver than I
am.”
“Are you really going—like that?” faltered Cynthia, and her face blanched
at the suddenness of it.
“Yes. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you in London when you return.”
Their hands met in a firm clasp. Mrs. Devar, too flustered at first to gasp
more than an “Oh!” of astonishment, leaned forward and shook his hand
with marked cordiality.
“You must tell Dale to take great care of us,” she said, knowingly.

“I think he realizes the exceeding trust I repose in him,” he said, but the
accompanying smile was meant for Cynthia, and she read into it a farewell
that presaged many things.
He disappeared without another word. When a slim, elegantly-gowned lady
had hastened to the door from the drawing-room, whence she was
summoned by a page, she found two dust-covered figures in the act of
alighting from a well-appointed car. Her next glance was at the solemn jowl
of the chauffeur.
“Cynthia, my darling girl!” she cried, with arms thrown wide.
There could be no doubting the heartiness of the greeting, and in that
motherly embrace Cynthia felt a repose, a security, that she had been
willfully skeptical of during many weary hours. But polite usage called for
an introduction, and Mrs. Leland and Mrs. Devar eyed each other warily,
with the smiles of convention.
Mrs. Leland glanced at Dale.
“And who is this?” she asked, seizing the opportunity to settle a point that
was perplexing her strangely.
“Our chauffeur,” said Cynthia, and a glint of fun showed through the
wanness of her cheeks.
“But not—not——”
Even smooth-tongued Mrs. Leland was at a loss.
“Not Fitzroy, who left us a minute ago. This man’s name is Dale. One
wonders, though, how you knew—why you doubted,” cried Cynthia in
sharp discernment.
“Pray why did Fitzroy leave you a minute ago?” was all that the other
woman could find to say.
“He had to return to London. But, there—it is I who ought to ask questions.
Let us go inside. I want to get some of the grit out of my eyes and hair; then
I shall become an absolute mark of interrogation—so I warn you. Of
course, I am delighted to see you; but queer things have happened, and I am

pining to have them cleared up. When did you see father last? Is he still in
London?”
Mrs. Leland answered, with freer speech now, but in her heart she was
saddened by Medenham’s duplicity. Six months earlier he and the Earl had
dined at the villa she was occupying at San Remo for the winter. She then
took a great liking to him on account of his shy and reticent but singularly
pleasing manners. She was prepared to laugh at the present escapade when
she had discussed it with him that night. Now he had fled, doubtless
through fear. That was bad. That looked ugly and mean. Most certainly
Peter Vanrenen had acted rightly in bringing her post-haste from Trouville.
She must use all her skill if mischief were to be avoided.

CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN WRATH BEGUILES GOOD JUDGMENT
“
Good-mornin’, George.”
“Good-morning, dad.”
“Enjoy your run to Hereford?”
“Immensely. Did you?”
“It was not so bad. Rather tiresome, you know, travelin’ alone, but on the
return journey I fell in with a decent sort of Frenchman who helped to pass
the time.”
“Monsieur Marigny, in fact?”
“Ah, you know him, of course. I had forgotten.”
“I have met him. He is not the kind of person I care to know.”
The Earl selected an egg, tapped it, and asked his son what he thought of
the crops—did they want rain? The two were breakfasting alone—at the
moment there was not even a man-servant in the room—but Lord
Fairholme had long ago established the golden rule that controversial topics
were taboo during meals. Medenham laughed outright at the sudden change
of topic. He remembered that Dale was sent to bed in the Green Dragon
Hotel at eight o’clock, and he had not the least doubt that his father’s ukase
was really a dodge to secure an undisturbed dinner. But he was under no
delusions because of this placid meeting in the breakfast-room. There was
thunder in the air. Tomkinson had warned him of it overnight.
“There’s bin ructions while you were away, my lord,” the butler had
whispered, waylaying him in the hall just before midnight. “Lady St. Maur
has upset the Earl somethink dreadful;” and Medenham had growled in
reply: “Her ladyship will lunch here at one o’clock to-morrow, Tomkinson.

Have an ambulance ready at two, for she will be in little pieces before I
have done with her. The mangling will be somethink orful.”
“But what has become of Dale, my lord?” went on Tomkinson in a hushed
voice.
“Dale? He is all right. Why? Is he in the soup, too?”
“No, my lord. I’ve heard nothink of that, but he sent me a wire from Bristol
——”
“A telegram—about what?”
“About a horse.”
“Oh, the deuce take you and your horses. By the way, that reminds me—
you gave me a rotten tip for the Derby.”
“It was a false run race, my lord. The favorite was swep’ off his feet at
Tattenham Corner, and couldn’t get into his stride again till the field was
opposite Langland’s Stands. After that——”
“After that I’m going to bed. But I forgive you, Tomkinson. You put up a
ripping good lunch. You’re a far better butler than a tipster.”
This brief conversation had illumined at least one dubious page in the
records of the past few days. Medenham realized now that his aunt had
emptied the vials of her wrath on Mrs. Devar, but, that lady being absent in
body, the Earl had received the full dose. It indicated somewhat the line he
should follow when, breakfast ended, his father suggested that they should
smoke a cigarette in the library.
Once there, and the door closed, the Earl established himself on the hearth-
rug with his back to the fireplace. It was high summer, and the lazy London
heat crept in through the open windows; but the hearth-rug constituted a
throne, a seat of Solomon; had his lordship stood anywhere else he would
have felt lacking in authority.
“Now, George, my boy, tell me all about it,” he said, with a genially
paternal air that lent itself admirably to the discussion of a youngster’s
transgressions.

Medenham had a sense of humor denied to his well-meaning sire. He
recalled the last time he had heard those words. He and another sprig of
nobility had come up to London from Winchester without leave in order to
attend a famous glove contest between heavyweights, and there had been
wigs on the green before an irate head-master would even deign to flog
them. That had happened twelve years ago, almost to a day. Since then he
had fought through a great war, had circled the globe, had sought the wild
places of earth and its monsters in their lairs. He knew men and matters as
his father had never known them. A Prime Minister had urged him to adopt
a political career, and had virtually promised him a colonial under-
secretaryship as soon as he entered parliament. He held the D.S.O., had
been thanked by the Royal Geographical Society for a paper on
Kilimanjaro, and cordially invited by the Foreign Office to send in any
further notes in his possession. Months later, he heard that Sir Somebody
Something was deeply interested in his comments on the activity of a
certain Great Power in the neighborhood of Britain’s chief coaling-stations
in the Indian Ocean.
The absurdity of a family conclave in which he should again be treated as a
small boy, and admonished to apologize and be flogged, while it brought a
smile to his lips, banished any notion of angry remonstrance.
“By ‘all about it’ I suppose you mean that you wish to hear what I have
been doing since last Wednesday,” he said pleasantly. “Well, dad, I have
obeyed your orders. You asked me to find a wife worthy to reign at
Fairholme. I have succeeded.”
“You don’t mean to say you have married her!” shouted the Earl, in a
purple upheaval of rage whose lightning-like abruptness was not its least
amazing feature. Certainly Medenham was taken aback by it. Indeed, he
was almost alarmed, though he had no knowledge of apoplexy in the
family.
“I have not even asked the lady yet,” he said quietly. “I hope—I think—that
the idea will not be disagreeable to her; but a future Countess of Fairholme
is not to be carried by storm in that fashion. We must get to know her
people——”

“D—n her people!” broke in the older man. “Have you taken leave of your
wits, George, to stand there and talk such infernal nonsense?”
“Steady, dad, steady!” and the quiet voice grew still more calm, though the
forehead wrinkled a little, and there was an ominous tightening of the lips.
“You must take that back. Peter Vanrenen is quite as great a man in the
United States as you are in England—may I even say, without disrespect, a
man who has won a more commanding position?—and his daughter,
Cynthia, is better fitted to adorn a coronet than a great many women now
entitled to wear one.”
The Earl laughed, with an immoderate display of an amusement he was far
from feeling.
“Are these Wiggy Devar’s credentials? By gad, that shabby little wretch is
flying high when she tries to bag my son for her pretty protégée!”
“Don’t you think it would be wiser, sir, if you allowed me to tell you
exactly what has taken place since we met last?”
“What good purpose will that serve? I have heard the whole story from
Lady Porthcawl, from Dale, from that Frenchman—and Heaven knows I
have been well coached in Mrs. Devar’s antecedents by your Aunt Susan.
George, I am surprised that a man of your sound commonsense should
permit yourself to be humbugged so egregiously.... Yes, yes, I am aware that
an accident led you to take Simmonds’s place in the first instance, but can’t
you see that the Devar creature must have gone instantly on her bended
knees—if she ever does pray, which I doubt—and thanked Providence for
the chance that enabled her to dispose of an earldom?... At a pretty stiff
price, too, I’ll be bound, if the truth were told. Really, George,
notwithstanding your very extensive travels and wide experiences, you are
nothing but a kid in the hands of a managing woman of the Devar variety.”
“I am not being given in marriage by Mrs. Devar, I assure you,” began
Medenham, smiling anxiously, for the fatherly “tell me all about it” was not
being borne out by the Earl’s petulance.
“No. You can trust me to take care of that.”

“But are you treating me quite fairly? Why should the distorted version of
my affairs given by Lady Porthcawl, a woman whom Cynthia Vanrenen
could not possibly receive in her house, and by Count Edouard Marigny, a
disappointed fortune-hunter, be accepted without cavil, while my own story
is not listened to? I leave Dale out of it. I am sure he told you the actual
truth——”
“By the way, where is he now?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of Chester, I believe.”
“Have you discharged him?”
“No—why should I?”
“Because I wish it.”
“Why in the world are you so unreasonable, dad?”
“Unreasonable! By gad, I like that. Have I been gallivanting round the
country with some——”
“Stop! You are going too far. This conversation must cease here and now. If
you have any respect for yourself, though not for me, you must adjourn the
discussion till after you have met Miss Vanrenen and her father.”
For the first time in his life, the Earl of Fairholme realized his limitations;
he was actually cowed for a few fleeting seconds. But the arrogant training
of the county bench, the seignory of a vast estate, the unquestioning
deference accorded to his views by thousands of men who tacitly admitted
that what he said must be right because he was a lord—these excellent stays
of self-conceit came to his help, and he snorted indignantly:
“I absolutely refuse to meet either of them.”
“That disposes of the whole difficulty for the hour,” said Medenham,
turning to leave the room.
“Wait, George.... I insist——”
Perhaps a clearer glimpse of a new and, to him, utterly unsuspected force in
his son’s character withheld the imperious command that trembled on the

Earl’s lips. Medenham halted. The two looked at each other, and the older
man fidgeted with his collar, which seemed to have grown tight for his
neck.
“Come, come, let us not leave a friendly argument in this unsettled state,”
he said after an awkward pause. “My only thought is for your interests, you
know. Your lifelong happiness is at stake, to say nothing of the future of our
house.”
“I recognize those considerations so fully that I am going now in order to
shirk even the semblance of a quarrel between us.”
“Why not thresh things out? Your aunt will be here in a couple of hours
——”
“You refuse to hear a word. You argue with a hammer, sir. I shall send a
note to Lady St. Maur telling her that she has done mischief in plenty
without adding fuel to the fire by coming here to-day—unless you wish to
consult her, that is?”
The Earl, already afraid of his sister, was rapidly learning to fear his son.
“Dash it all! don’t tell me you are off on this d—d motoring trip once
more?” he cried passionately.
Medenham smiled, even in his anger.
“See how willfully you misunderstand me,” he said. “I came away from
Miss Vanrenen solely because matters had gone far enough under rather
absurd conditions. She knows me only as Fitzroy, the chauffeur; it is time to
drop masquerading. Romance is delightful in its way—perhaps there might
well be more of it in this commonplace world of ours—but none of us can
afford to play the knight errant too long, so when next I meet Cynthia it will
be as a man who occupies a social position that renders our marriage at
least possible.”
Lord Fairholme threw out his hands in a gesture of sheer bewilderment.
“And do you honestly believe that?” he exclaimed.

“I am quite sure of it. I may have to jump a very big fence indeed when she
learns the harmless deception I have practiced on her, but I do hope most
devoutly that she will look at the facts more calmly than you have done.”
The Earl took a turn or two on the hearth-rug, from which wisdom had
temporarily taken flight. He thought now he could see a way to avoid open
rupture, and he believed, quite rightly, that his son was in no mood to accept
further disillusionment.
“At any rate,” he grumbled, “you are cutting a discred—sorry, I didn’t quite
mean that—you are not rushing away from town again in pursuit of the
young lady?”
“No.”
“When is she due back in London?”
“On Sunday.”
“And you will not see her before that day?”
“I believe not—in fact, I am fairly certain of it. Mrs. Leland joined her at
Chester last night, so there should be no curtailment of the tour.”
The Earl started.
“Mrs. Leland! Not the Mrs. Leland of Paris, and San Remo?”
“Yes. By hazard, as it were, you have let me tell you why I came away—
one of the reasons. Mrs. Leland would have recognized me at once.”
“Dear me, dear me, this is a beastly muddle! Look here, George, promise
me you won’t do anything stupid for a day or so.... I have been so pestered
by people ... I don’t know which way to turn. Why not stay and meet your
aunt?”
“Because I might lose my temper with her.”
“Ah, well, she is somewhat trying when it comes to family matters. Still, I
may tell her——”

“That she ought to mind her own business? By all means. And oblige me,
too, by telling her that she would confer a boon on humanity if she
persuaded Lady Porthcawl to go to—Jericho—or Tokio—or wherever that
ass, Porthcawl, may happen to be.”
“Millicent Porthcawl was at Bournemouth, you know.”
“Yes, I spoke to her. She had the impudence to introduce Ducrot to
Cynthia.”
“By gad! Did she, though? I heard something from Scarland about that
affair. Well, well—there’s no accounting for tastes. I suppose you realize,
George, that I am keeping back a good deal of the tittle-tattle which reached
me during your absence. I don’t want to hurt your feelings——”
“Thank you. The absurdity of the present position lies in the fact that I shall
have all my work cut out to hold your wrath against these people within
bounds when once you have met Cynthia.”
“Oh, I have no doubt she is pretty, and fascinating, and all that sort of
thing,” growled the Earl, in a grudging access of good humor. “Confound it,
that is why we are putty in their hands, George. Don’t forget I’ve had fifty-
five years of ’em. Gad! I could tell you things—all right, let us chuck the
dispute for the time. Shall I see you at dinner?”
“Yes—if you are alone.”
“There will be no women. I’ll take devilish good care of that. Scarland is in
town for the show, and he is bringing Sir Ashley Stoke, but Betty is nursing
a youngster through the measles. Good Lord! I’m glad your aunt didn’t get
hold of Betty!”
Now, Lord Fairholme’s diatribes against the sex were not quite justified.
Notorious as a lady-killer in his youth, in middle age he was as garrulous a
gossip as Mrs. Devar herself. Indeed, he had an uneasy consciousness that
Lady St. Maur might turn and rend him if stress were laid only on her
efforts to thwart his son’s unexpected leaning towards matrimony. During
every yard of the journey from Chester to London he had tried to extract
information from Marigny, and the sharp-witted Frenchman had enjoyed
himself hugely in displaying a well-feigned reluctance to yield to the Earl’s

probing. It was just as much a part of his scheme to make the threatened
alliance as objectionable on the one side as on the other. By painting
Medenham as an unprincipled adventurer he had succeeded in alarming
Vanrenen; his sly hints, derogatory of both Cynthia and her father, now
fanned the flame of suspicion kindled in Lord Fairholme’s breast by his
sister’s remonstrances. Unfortunately, his lordship had gone straight to
Curzon Street and told Susan St. Maur every word that Marigny had said,
and a good deal that he had not said, but had left to be inferred from a
smirk, a malicious glance, an airy gesture.
Perhaps the two elderly guardians of the Fairholme line were not wholly to
blame for their interference. The title descended through male heirs only,
and Medenham’s marriage thereby attained an added importance. Lord
Fairholme himself had been singularly fortunate in escaping a mésalliance
—several, in fact—and it was the one great trouble in his otherwise smooth
and self-contained life that his high-born and most admirable countess had
died soon after the birth of her second child, the present Marchioness of
Scarland. Such a man would naturally be the most jealous scrutineer of the
pretensions of his son’s chosen wife. Qualities of heart and mind would
weigh light in the scale against genealogy. To his thinking, blue blood
differed from the common red stream as the claret of some noted vintage
differs from the vin ordinaire of the same year. Perhaps he had blundered on
a well-founded theory, but he certainly lacked discrimination as to the cru.
Medenham did some shopping, lunched at a club, surprised his tailor by a
prolonged visit and close inspection of tweeds and broadcloths, and
successfully repressed a strong desire to write a letter. It was some
consolation to peruse for the twentieth time the four closely-written pages
on which Cynthia had set out the tour’s timetable for the benefit of
Simmonds. He had not returned it, since she possessed a copy, and in his
mind’s eye he followed the Mercury in its flight up the map from end to end
of industrial Lancashire, through smoky Preston to trim Lancaster and quiet
Kendal, and finally, after a long day, to the brooding peace and serene
beauty of Windermere.
At last, rousing himself from his dreaming—for he was now back in his
club again, sipping a cup of tea—he glanced at his watch. Five o’clock—a
likely hour to find Mr. Vanrenen in the hotel, if, as was most probable,

Devar’s telegram to his mother was altogether mistaken in its report of the
millionaire’s movements.
He meant, of course, to make himself known to Vanrenen, and go through
the whole adventure from A to Z. It should provide an interesting story, he
thought—lively as a novel in some of its chapters, and calculated to appeal
strongly to the bright intelligence of an American. On his way to the Savoy,
he tried to picture to himself just what Cynthia’s father would look like. It
was a futile endeavor, because he had never yet been able to construct a
mental portrait of any man wholly unknown to him. One day in Madras he
had telephoned to an official for leave to shoot an elephant in a Government
reservation, and a deep voice boomed back an answer. Apparently it
belonged to a man whose stature warranted his appointment as controller of
monsters, but when Medenham called in person for the permit he found that
the voice came from a lean and wizened scrap of humanity about five feet
high.
He smiled at the recollection of his dumb surprise at this apparition, and
was in the best of humors with himself when he arrived at the inquiry office
of the Savoy Hotel and asked for Mr. Peter Vanrenen.
“Left here Sunday, sir,” was the answer. “He will not return for a week.”
This blow dished his hopes. He had counted strongly on gaining Vanrenen’s
friendship and sympathy before Cynthia’s dainty vision met his eyes again.
“Has he gone to Paris?” he inquired.
“Can’t say, sir, I’m sure. My orders are to tell callers that Mr. Vanrenen will
be in town next Tuesday.”
So, if present arrangements held good, Cynthia would reach London two
days before her father. Well, he must contrive somehow to get Lady St.
Maur in a proper frame of mind. Mrs. Leland’s presence would be a
positive blessing in that respect. Meanwhile, there would be no harm done
if he——
Lest prudence should conquer him a second time he sat down and wrote:

Dear Miss Vanrenen—I hope the car is behaving in a manner
that befits the messenger of the gods, and that Dale has justified
my faith in him. I am here in fulfillment of my promise to call
on Mr. Vanrenen: unluckily, he is out of town, and the hotel
people say he is not expected back till a day early next week. If
you make any change in your programme, or even if you have a
minute to spare, though proving yourself a true American by
rigidly adhering to schedule, please send a line to yours ever
sincerely——
Once more he hesitated at the name, and contented himself by signing
“George, the Chauffeur.”
The problem of an address offered some difficulty, but he boldly declared
for “91 Grosvenor Square” in a postscript, believing, and correctly as it
happened, that Cynthia shared with Sam Weller a peculiar knowledge of
London that rendered one address very like unto another in her eyes.
The failure to meet Vanrenen was the first real drawback he had
encountered. It was irritating, at the time, but he gave little heed to it after
the first pang of disappointment had passed. Fate, which had proved so kind
during six days, did not see fit to warn him that her smiles would now be
replaced by frowns. She even lulled him into the belief that Vanrenen’s
absence might prove fortunate.
“Perhaps,” he fancied, “I would have rubbed him up the wrong way. He is
devoted to his daughter, and he might look on my harmless but unavoidable
guile with a prejudiced eye. In any event, I should be compelled to go slow
in analyzing Mrs. Devar’s motives, and this pertinacious Marigny seems to
have been fairly intimate with him in Paris. Yes, on the whole, it is just as
well that I missed him. Cynthia can put matters before him in a better light
than is possible to one who is an utter stranger. I must tell her, in my best
American, that it is up to her to explain Fitzroy to pap.”
Before leaving the hotel he inquired for Count Edouard Marigny. He drew a
blank there. No such name had been registered during the year.
The dinner passed without noteworthy incident. Sir Ashley Stoke
condemned the Government, the Marquis of Scarland was more than

skeptical as to the prospects of grouse shooting after the deluge in April and
May, Lord Fairholme growled at the pernicious effects of the Ground Game
Act, and Medenham spoke of these things with his lips but in his heart
thought of Cynthia. The four men were in the smoking-room, and the Earl
was chaffing his son on account of his inability to play bridge, when
Tomkinson entered. He approached Medenham.
“Dale has arrived; he wishes to see your lordship,” he said in a stage
whisper.
“Dale!”
The young man sprang to his feet, and his troubled cry brought a smile of
wonderment to his brother-in-law’s face.
“By Jove!” said the Marquis, “you couldn’t have jumped quicker if
Tomkinson had said ‘the devil’ instead of ‘Dale.’ Who, then, is Dale?”
Medenham hurried from the room without another word. The Earl shook his
head.
“More mischief!” he muttered. “Dale is George’s chauffeur. I suppose he is
mixed up in this Vanrenen muddle again.”
“What muddle is that?” asked Scarland. “Is George in it?—that would be
unusual.”
Fairholme suddenly bethought himself.
“Something to do with a motor,” he said vaguely. “The Vanrenens are
Americans, friends of Mrs. Leland’s. You remember her, Arthur, don’t
you?”
“Perfectly. Is ‘Vanrenen’ the Peter of that ilk?”
“I think so. Yes—that is the name—Peter Vanrenen.”
“Oh, he’s all right. If George has any dispute with him I’ll settle it in a
minute. He is as straight as they make ’em—bought two of my prize bulls
three years ago for his ranch in Montana. By the way, someone told me the
other day that he has a very pretty daughter—‘a real peach’ the man said.

Wonder if George has seen her? Begad, he might go farther and fare worse.
We effete aristocrats can do with a strain of new blood occasionally, eh,
what?”
“‘Vanrenen’ sounds like a blend of old Dutch and New England,” said Sir
Ashley Stoke, who was sane on all subjects save one, his pet mania being
the decay of England since the passing of the Victorian age.
The Earl helped himself to a whisky and soda. His egotism was severely
shaken. Who would have thought that a pillar of the state like Scarland
would approve of this Vanrenen girl as a match for George, even in jest?
But he had the good sense to steer clear of explanations. When he found his
voice it was to swear at the quality of the whisky.
Medenham, meanwhile, had rushed into the hall. He expected to find Dale
there, but saw no one except the suave footman on duty. The man opened
the door.
“Dale is outside, in the car, my lord,” he said.
“In the car!” That meant the bursting of a meteor in a blue sky.
Sure enough, there stood the Mercury, dusty and panting, but seemingly
gathering breath for another mighty effort if necessary.
“Come in!” shouted Medenham, on whom the first strong shadow of
impending disaster had fallen as soon as he heard those ill-omened words
“in the car.”
Dale scrambled to the pavement and walked stiffly up the steps, being
weary after an almost unbroken run of one hundred and eighty miles. He
nodded to the Mercury, and the footman rang for a pageboy to mount guard.
Medenham led the way into a small anteroom and switched on the light.
“Now,” he said.
“Mr. Vanrenen kem to Chester last night in Simmond’s car, my lord. This
mornin’ he sent for me an’ sez ‘who are you?’ ‘The chauffeur, sir,’ sez I.
‘Whose chauffeur?’ sez he. ‘Yours for the time,’ sez I, bein’ sort of ready for
him. ‘Well, you can get,’ sez he. ‘Get what?’ sez I. ‘Get out,’ sez he. Of

course, my lord, I knew well enough what he meant, but I wanted to have it
straight, an’ I got it.”
Dale’s style of speech was elliptical, though he might have been surprised if
told so. For once, Medenham wished he was a loquacious man.
“Was nothing else said?” he asked. “No message from—anyone? No reason
given? What brought Simmonds to Chester?”
“Mr. Vanrenen picked him up in Bristol at 4 a.m. yesterday, my lord.
Simmonds made out that that there Frenchman, Monsieur Marinny” (Dale
prided himself on a smattering of French), “had pitched a fine ole tale about
you. In fact, the bearings got so hot at Symon’s Yat that Simmonds chucked
his job till Mr. Vanrenen sort of apologized.”
“Can you be specific, Dale? You are hard to follow.”
“Well, my lord, I could do with a drink. It’s a long road that stretches
between here an’ Chester, an’ I left there at ten o’clock this morning,
runnin’ through any Gord’s quantity of traps, an’ all.”
Medenham did not smile. He touched a bell, and found that Dale’s specific
was a bottle of beer.
“I never set eyes on Miss Cynthia,” continued the chauffeur, his wits
quickening under the soothing draught. “Another lady kem out an’ looked
me up an’ down. ‘Yes, that is the car,’ she said, an’ with that I remembered
seein’ her at San Remo. Mrs. Devar seemed as if she wanted to say
somethink, but she daren’t, because Mr. Vanrenen’s eye was on her. He
made no bones about it, but told me to hike back to London the minnit
Simmonds got the carrier off.”
“I am quite clear on that point. What I really want to know is the reason
behind Simmonds’s statement about Count Marigny’s tale-pitching, as you
term it.”
“Oh, of course Mr. Vanrenen didn’t say anythink. Simmonds was what you
call puttin’ two an’ two together. From what Mr. Vanrenen arsked him it was
easy enough to get at the Frenchman’s dirty tricks.”

“Tell me how Simmonds put it?” said Medenham, with the patience of a
great anger. Dale scratched the back of his ear.
“For one thing, my lord, Mr. Vanrenen wanted to know if you was reelly a
viscount. It was a long time before Simmonds could get him to believe that
the accident in Down Street wasn’t a put up job. Then, he was sure you
stopped in Symon’s Yat just in order to throw Mr. Marinny off your track.
Simmonds is no fool, my lord, an’ he guesses that the Frenchman brought
Mr. Vanrenen hot-foot from Paris so as to—to——”
Dale grinned, and sought inspiration in the bottom of an empty glass.
“Well, my lord, excuse me,” he said, “but you know what I mean.”
Medenham completed the sentence.
“So as to prevent me from marrying Miss Cynthia.”
“Exactly what Simmonds an’ me said, my lord.”
“He will not succeed, Dale.”
“I never thought he would. Once your lordship is set on a thing, well, that
thing occurs.”
“Thank you. Good-night!”
Medenham did not feel equal to facing the men in the smoking-room again.
He went out, walked up Oxford Street and across the park, and reached his
room about midnight. Next day he devoted himself to work. In view of the
new and strange circumstances that had arisen he believed confidently that
Cynthia would reply to his letter by return of post, and there should be no
chance of delay, because she meant to stay two days at Windermere, making
that town the center of excursions through lakeland.
While the son was seeking forgetfulness in classifying a collection of moths
and night flies caught during a week at La Turbie, the father found
occupation in prosecuting diligent inquiries into the social and financial
standing of Peter Vanrenen. As a result, the Earl visited Lady St. Maur, and,
as a further result, Lady St. Maur wrote a very biting and sarcastic note to

“My dear Millicent.” Moreover, she decided not to press her nephew to visit
her at present.
Next morning, Medenham was up betimes. He heard the early postman’s
knock, and Tomkinson in person brought the letters.
“There’s nothink in the name of Fitzroy, my lord,” said he, having been
warned in that matter overnight.
Medenham took his packet with the best grace possible, trying to assure
himself that Cynthia had written at a late hour and had missed the first
London mail in consequence. Glancing hurriedly through the
correspondence, however, his glance fell on a letter bearing the Windermere
postmark. It was addressed, in an unfamiliar hand, to “Viscount
Medenham,” and the writing was bold, well-formed, and business-like.
Then he read:
Sir—My daughter received a note from you this morning, and
she was about to answer it when I informed her that she was
communicating with a person who had given her an assumed
name. I also asked her, as a favor, to permit me to reply in her
stead. Now, I have this to say—Miss Vanrenen does not know,
and will never know from me, the true nature of the trick you
played on her. You bear the label of a gentleman, so it is my
earnest hope—indeed, my sincere belief—that you will respect
the trust she placed in you, and not expose her to the idle chatter
of clubs and scandal-spreading drawing-rooms. During two days
I have been very bitter against you. To-day I take a calmer view,
and, provided that neither my daughter nor I ever see or hear of
you again, I shall be willing to credit that you acted more in a
spirit of youthful caprice than from any foul desire to injure the
good repute of one who has done no harm to you or yours.
I am,
Yours truly,
Peter Vanrenen.
Medenham read and reread this harsh letter many times. Then, out of
brooding chaos, leaped one fiery question—where was Marigny?

The gate which Cynthia’s father had shut and bolted in his face did not
frighten him. He had leaped a wall of brass and triple steel when he won
Cynthia Vanrenen’s love in the guise of an humble chauffeur, so it was
unbelievable that the barrier interposed by a father’s misguided wrath
should prove unsurmountable.
But Marigny! He wanted to feel his fingers clutching that slender throat, to
see that pink and white face empurple and grow black under their strain,
and it was all-important that the scoundrel should be brought to book before
the Vanrenens returned to London. He gave a passing thought to Mrs.
Leland, it was true. If she shared with Vanrenen the silly little secret of his
identity, it was beyond comprehension that she should let her friend hold
the view that he (Medenham) was merely an enterprising blackguard.
Still, these considerations were light as thistle-down compared with the
need of finding Marigny. He and Dale began to hunt London for the
Frenchman. But they had to deal with a wary bird, who would not break
covert till it suited his own convenience. And then, the sublime cheek of the
man! On the Friday morning, when Medenham rose with a fixed resolve to
obtain the services of a private detective, he received this note:
Dear Viscount Medenham—I have a notion, as our mutual
acquaintance Mr. Vanrenen would say (Do you know him? Now
that I consider the matter, I think not), that you are anxious to
meet me. We have things to discuss, have we not? Well, then I
await you at the above address.
Yours to command,
Edouard Marigny.

CHAPTER XIV
—AND GOOD JUDGMENT YIELDS TO FOLLY

Atthisanyletter
other moment the tone of confidence underlying the effrontery of
would certainly have revealed its presence to a brain more
than ordinarily acute. But in the storm and stress of his rage against gods
and men, Medenham did not wait to ponder subtleties of expression. No
matter what the hidden reason that inspired Marigny’s pen, it was enough
for Medenham to know that at last that arch-plotter and very perfect rascal
was within his reach. He breakfasted in a fury of haste, crammed on a hat,
and rushed away, meaning to drive in a cab to the hotel in Northumberland
Avenue from which Marigny wrote.
Such was his agitated state that he was not even surprised when he found
the Mercury waiting outside, with Dale, taciturn as ever, scrutinizing the
day’s sporting news. In sober fact, the man was almost as perturbed as his
master. For an hour in the morning, and again during certain periods of
suspense in the afternoon, he forgot his troubles in the effort either to “spot
winners” or to persuade himself that the horses he had selected for
particular races had not run, since their names failed to appear among the
“first three.” But these spasms of anticipation and disillusionment soon
passed. During the remainder of the long hours of daylight Dale was ever
on the qui vive for a wild rush of two or three hundred miles in pursuit of
the woman whose charms had so effectually subjugated the young Viscount.
Even the hunt for Marigny did not weaken Dale’s belief, and Medenham
was never in Cavendish Square or at his club at any practicable hour that
the Mercury was not at hand, with petrol tanks full, luggage carriers
attached, and a full stock of spares and reserve spirit on board. At any rate,
on this occasion Medenham merely gave him Marigny’s address, and
jumped inside. Dale was disappointed. He expected the order to be
“Carlisle,” at the least.
Soon his lordship was being conducted by an hotel servant to a private
sitting-room. The Frenchman, who was seated at a table, writing, when he

entered, rose and bowed politely.
“I thought it highly probable that I should have the honor of seeing you this
morning, Viscount Medenham,” he said, and there was a touch of restraint,
of formal courtesy, in his voice that the other, even in his anger against the
man, did not fail to notice. Oddly enough, it savored of brutality to attack
him without preface, and Marigny seemed to be unconscious of his visitor’s
unconcealed animosity.
“I am glad you are here,” he went on glibly. “Recent events call for a full
discussion between you and me, do you agree? But before we come to close
quarters, as you say in England, I wish to know whether the argument is to
be conducted on lines that befit gentlemen. On the last occasion when we
differed, you used the methods of the costermonger.”
“They served their purpose,” said Medenham, annoyed at finding the
Frenchman’s coolness rather disconcerting.
Suddenly, he decided on a new plan of action, and resolved to let the man
say what he chose. Dearly as he would have liked to wreak physical
vengeance on him, he felt that such a proceeding offered the least
satisfactory way out of a situation fraught with no small risk of publicity.
Marigny must have had some all-powerful motive in sending for him; better
learn that before his bitter and contemptuous words sealed an adversary’s
lips.
“Won’t you sit down?” came the urbane request.
“I prefer standing, if you don’t mind,” said Medenham curtly; then he
added, after a little pause:
“It may clear the atmosphere somewhat if I tell you that I threatened you at
Bristol merely because a certain issue had to be determined within a few
seconds. That consideration does not apply now. You are at liberty to say
what you like without fear of consequences.”
The Frenchman elevated his eyebrows.
“Fear?” he said.

“Oh, don’t bandy words with me. You know what I mean. I suppose a man
must possess courage of a sort even to become a blackmailer, which is what
you threaten to develop into. At any rate, I promise to keep my hands off
you, if that is what you want.”
“Not exactly,” was the quiet answer. “One may draw distinctions, even in
that regard, but I do wish for an opportunity to discuss our quarrel without
an appeal to brute force.”
“In other words,” said Medenham sternly, “you want to be free to say
something which under ordinary conditions would earn you a thrashing.
Well—say it!”
Marigny nodded, pulled a chair round so that he was straddled across it,
facing Medenham, with his arms resting on the back. He lit a cigarette, and
seemed to draw inspiration from the first dense cloud of smoke, for his eyes
dwelt on it rather than sought the Englishman’s frown.
“In a dispute of this kind,” he said, “it is well to begin at the beginning,
otherwise one’s motives are apt to be misunderstood. Even you, I suppose,
will admit that I was first in the field.”
There was no answer. To his credit, Medenham thought, Marigny showed a
curious unwillingness to mention Cynthia’s name, but, no matter what he
had in mind, Medenham certainly did not intend to render his task easier.
“You see,” went on Count Edouard, after a thoughtful puff or two, “I am
quite as well-born a man in my country as you are in yours. I have not
ascertained the date when the Fairholme Earldom was created, but there has
been a Comte Marigny on the Loire since 1434. Of course, you understand
that I do not mention this trivial fact in any ridiculous spirit of boasting. I
only put it forward as constituting a claim to a certain equality. That is all.
Unfortunately, recent events in my family have robbed me of those
necessary appurtenances to rank and position which a happier fate has
preserved to you. I am poor, you are rich; I must marry a wife with money,
you can afford to marry for love. Why then, Viscount Medenham, should
you step in and rob me of a rich wife?”
In spite of his loathing of the means adopted by this self-proclaimed rival to
snatch an advantage, Medenham did not hesitate to reply:

“My answer to that is, of course, that I have done nothing of the sort. I
simply intervened between a crew of adventurers and their possible, though
most improbable, victim.”
“Unfortunately, our points of view are irreconcilable,” went on the
Frenchman airily. “I might claim that the term adventurer, as applied to me,
is a harsh one. You may inquire where and how you choose in Paris, and
you will find no discredit attached to my name. But that phase of the
difficulty is now of no consequence. Let us keep to the main issue. Some
three months ago I made the acquaintance of a lady fitted in every respect
to fill my ideal. I was on good terms with her father, and by no means
distasteful to the lady herself. Given a fair opportunity, I thought I might
win her, and I was puzzling my wits to know how best to attain that most
desirable end when Fate apparently opened a way. But you have no doubt
observed in life that while one can seldom misinterpret Fate’s frowns, her
smiles can be damnably misleading. Sometimes they are little else than
malicious leers; it was so now, and I quickly found that I had erred badly in
thinking that I had been vouchsafed a golden opportunity——”
“Can’t you spare me some of this theorizing?” broke in Medenham with a
cold impatience. “You happened to send for me at a moment when I was
exceedingly anxious to meet you. The fact that I am here in response to
your request stops me from carrying out the special purpose I had in view.
That can wait, though not very long. At any rate, you might save yourself
some hair-splitting and me some exercise of self-restraint by telling me
what it is that you want.”
“A thousand regrets if I am boring you,” said Marigny, leaning back in the
chair and laying the cigarette on the mantelpiece. “Yet bear with me a little
while, I pray you; these explanations are necessary. A sane man acts with
motive, and it is only reasonable that you should understand my motive
before you hear my project.”
“Ah, then, there is a project?”
“Yes. You have stepped in between me and the realization of my dearest
wish, of my main object in life. You are, I take it, a soldier and a gentleman.
There is a way by which men of honor settle these disputes—I invite you to
follow it.”

The fantastic proposal was made with an air of dignity that robbed it of any
inherent ludicrousness. Greatly as he despised this man, Medenham could
not wholly conceal the wonder that leaped to his eyes.
“Are you suggesting that we should fight a duel?” he asked, smiling with
incredulity, yet constrained to believe that Marigny was really speaking in
cold blood.
“Yes—oh, yes. A duel—no make-believe!”
A curious change came into Marigny’s voice at that instant. He seemed to
bark each staccato phrase; a vindictive fire gleamed in his black eyes, and
the olive tint showed beneath the pink and white of his skin.
Medenham laughed, almost good-humoredly.
“The notion is worthy of you,” he said. “I might have expected it, but I
fancied you were more sensible. Surely you know enough of my world to
realize that such a thing is impossible.”
“It must be made possible,” said Marigny gravely.
“It cannot—I refuse.”
“I am partly prepared for some such answer, but I shall be just to you in my
thoughts, Viscount Medenham. I know you are a brave man. It is not
cowardice, but your insular convention that restrains you from facing me on
the field. Nevertheless, I insist.”
Medenham threw out an impatient hand.
“You are talking arrant nonsense, for what purpose I can hardly conceive,”
he said, frowning with vexation at the tragi-comedy into which he had been
drawn. “Frenchmen, it is true, regard these things from a different
standpoint. That which seems rational to you is little else than buffoonery to
me. If that is your object in seeking an interview, it has now been
accomplished. I absolutely decline to entertain the proposition for a
moment. You have certainly succeeded in lending an air of drivel to a
controversy that I regard as serious. I came here filled with very bitter
thoughts toward you, but your burlesque has disarmed me. It is only fair,

however, that I should warn you not to cross my path again, since one’s
sense of humor may become strained, and that will be bad for you.”
His attitude seemed to betoken an immediate departure, but Marigny looked
at him so fixedly that he waited to hear what the other had to say. He was
quite determined now to keep Cynthia out of the discussion. Even
Vanrenen’s letter need not be mentioned until he had seen the millionaire in
person and disabused his mind of the inept inventions with which the
Frenchman had perplexed him.
“I don’t take your refusal as final,” said Count Edouard, speaking very
slowly, and choosing each sentence with evident care. “I was at pains to
explain my position, and there now devolves upon me the disagreeable duty
of telling you what will happen if you do not fight. You English may not
care to defend your honor in the manner that appeals to a more sensitive
nation like the French, but you are vulnerable in your womenfolk. I now tell
you quite frankly, that if you do not abandon your pretensions to Miss
Cynthia Vanrenen, I shall make it my special business in life to ruin her
socially.”
Medenham listened more in amazement than indignation.
At first, the true significance of the threat left him unmoved. In his ears it
was a mere repetition of the bogey raised by Vanrenen, and that was the
wildest nonsense.
“I really do not think you are responsible for your words,” he began.
Marigny swept aside the protest with an emphatic gesture.
“Oh, yes, I am,” he said, his voice low, sibilant, menacing. “I have laid my
plans, and shall pursue them with a complete detachment. Others may
suffer—so shall I. I have practically reached the limit of my resources. In a
month or less I shall be penniless. What money I could scrape together I
devoted to the furtherance of this marriage-project, and I am well aware that
when you meet Mr. Vanrenen, my poor little cobweb of intrigue will be
blown into thin air. You are quite a desirable parti, Viscount Medenham—
every condition points to your speedy and happy union to the lady of your
choice. It is, however, a most unfortunate and lamentable fact that she also
happens to be the lady of my choice, and I shall revenge myself on you,

through her, in the way best calculated to pierce your thick British hide. The
future Countess of Fairholme should be superior to Cæsar’s wife in being
not only above suspicion, but altogether removed from its taint. I am afraid
that it will be my task to tarnish her escutcheon.”
“You miserable rascal,” cried Medenham, stung beyond endurance by this
extraordinary declaration of a vile purpose, “why should you imagine that I
shall allow you to sit there and pour forth your venom unscathed? Stand up,
you beast, or must I kick you up!”
“Ha! You are ready to fight me now, my worthy Viscount! But not in your
costermonger fashion. You cannot, because I have your promise. You see I
have taken your measure with some accuracy, and hard words will not
move me. I mean you to understand the issue clearly. Either you meet me
under conditions that will insure a clear field for the survivor, or I devote
myself to spreading in every quarter most likely to prove damaging to Miss
Vanrenen the full, though, perhaps, untrue, but none the less fascinating
story of her boating excursion on the Wye at midnight.”
He did then spring to his feet, for Medenham was advancing on him with
obvious intent to stifle the monstrous accusation by force.
“No! No! you will achieve nothing by violence,” he shouted. “You are not
so much my physical superior that I cannot defend myself until assistance
arrives, and I will ask you to consider what manner of gloss will be placed
upon your actions if I drag you before a magistrate for an assault. Why,
man, you are absolutely at my mercy. You yourself would be my best
witness. Ah, touché! You felt the point that time. Que diable! I gave you
credit for a quicker wit, but it is gratifying to learn that you are beginning at
last to see that I am in deadly earnest. When I strike there is nothing half-
hearted behind my blow; I swear to you that I shall neither relent nor draw
back. If ruin overwhelm me, Cynthia Vanrenen shall be involved in my
downfall. Picture to yourself the smiles, the whispers, the half-spoken
scandal that will cling to her through life. Who will believe her when she
says that she was ignorant of your rank when she started out from London?
The incomparable Cynthia and the naughty Viscount, touring their thousand
miles through England with Mrs. Devar as a shield of innocence!... Mrs.
Devar!... Can’t you hear the long and loud guffaw that would convulse

society as soon as her name cropped up? Ah, you are writhing under the
lash now, I fancy! It is dawning on you that a peril greater than the sword or
bullet may be near. Dozens of people in Paris and London know, or guess,
at any rate, that I was Cynthia Vanrenen’s suitor, but as many hundreds as
there were dozens shall be told that I cast her off because of the taint placed
on her by your silly masquerading. You have no escape—you have no
answer—your marriage will only serve to confirm my words. Do you hear?
I shall say.... But you know what I shall say.... Now, will you fight me?”
“Yes,” said Medenham.
A spasm of hate and furious joy struggled for mastery in Marigny’s face,
but he showed an iron resolution that almost equaled the coolness of the
man whose scornful gaze might well have abashed him.
“I thought so,” he said—“under terms, of course?”
“Terms, you beast! The only terms I ask are that you shall stand before me
with a sword in your hand.”
“A sword!—is that quite fair? You Englishmen are not proficient with the
sword. Why not pistols?”
“I think you are right,” said Medenham, turning away as if the sight of him
was loathsome. “You deserve the death of a dog; it would dishonor bright
steel to touch you.”
“We shall see,” said Marigny, who having achieved his purpose, was now
apparently unconcerned as to its outcome. “But it would be folly to fight
without arriving at an understanding. I shall try to kill you, and I am sure
you will admit that I have striven to force you into an active reciprocity in
that respect. But one might only be wounded—that is the lottery of it—so I
stipulate that if fortune should favor me, and you still live, you shall agree
to leave me in undisturbed possession of the field for at least six months
after our encounter.”
Medenham still refused to look at him.
“I agree to no terms or conditions whatsoever,” he answered. “I am meeting
you solely because of the foul lie you have dared to utter against the

reputation of the woman I love. If you breathe a word of it in any other ear I
shall tear your tongue out by the roots, duel or no duel.”
“Ah, but that is a pity,” jeered the Frenchman. “Don’t you see that unless
you accept my offer I shall be compelled to fall back on the sword, since it
is absolutely an essential element of my probable success that you should
be cleared out of my way? I have no chance against you in the matrimonial
market, but I think the odds are in my favor when cold steel is the arbitrator.
Now, could anyone be more frank than I in this matter? I mean either to win
or lose. There must be no middle course. Unless you are willing to stand
aside, if beaten, I can win only by stepping over your corpse. Why not
avoid extremes? They may be unnecessary.”
“You have already convinced me that your ethics are drawn from the police
court, but I see now, that you depend for your wit on the cheaper variety of
melodrama,” said Medenham, with a quiet derision that at last brought a
flush of passion to the Frenchman’s face. “I fail to see the need of more
words. You have asked for deeds, and you shall have them. When and
where do you propose that this encounter shall take place?”
“To-morrow morning—about four o’clock—on the sands between Calais
and Wissant.”
In spite of all that had gone before, Medenham was unprepared for this
categorical answer. Were he in full possession of his faculties he must have
seen the trap into which he was being decoyed. Unhappily, Vanrenen’s letter
had helped to complete the lure, and he was no longer amenable to the
dictates of cold reason.
“That is hardly possible,” he said. “I do not propose to bring myself under
the law as a murderer, Monsieur Marigny. I am ready to take the
consequences of a fair fight, but to secure that, certain preliminaries are
indispensable.”
“I was sure you would meet me,” said Marigny, smiling nonchalantly as he
lighted the cigarette again. “I have arranged everything, even the attendance
of witnesses and a doctor. We cross over to Calais by the night boat from
Dover, pick up the others at the Hôtel de la Plage, at which they will arrive
to-night, and drive straight to the terrain. There is no prospect of outside

interference. This is not the sort of duel which either of the combatants is
anxious to advertise broadcast. My friends will be discretion itself, and I
need hardly express my conviction that you will not make known in
England the purpose of our journey. Of course, it is open to you to bring
one of your own friends, if you think fit. But my notion is, that these affairs
should be settled discreetly in the presence of the smallest possible number
of onlookers. I shall, of course, satisfy you as to the standing of the
gentlemen I have summoned from Paris. On the table there are their
telegrams accepting my invitation to meet us at Calais. When you came in I
was busy putting my wretched affairs in order. At least I have given you
proof of my belief in your courage. I even go so far as to say that I regret
most profoundly the necessity which has driven me to use threats against a
charming lady in order to wring a challenge out of you. Of course, between
ourselves, I know perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in the
statements I have pledged myself to make, but that defect in nowise detracts
from their efficiency. Indeed, it commends them the more to the real
purveyor of scandal——”
The door slammed behind Medenham. A dreadful doubt assailed him that if
he did not hurry away from that taunting voice he might be tempted to
forget himself—and what torture that would mean to Cynthia! He was
indeed a prey to complex emotions that rendered him utterly incapable of
forming a well-balanced judgment. Nothing more illogical, more ill-
advised, more thoroughly unsuited to achieve its object than the proposed
duel could well be mooted, yet the sheer malignity of Marigny’s ruffianly
device to attain his ends had impelled him to that final madness. Notions of
right and wrong were topsy-turvy in his brain. He was carried along on a
current of passion that overturned every barrier imposed by sense and
prudence. It seemed quite reasonable to one who had often risked life and
limb for his country, who, from mere love of sport, had faced many an
infuriated tiger and skulking lion, that he should be justified by the eternal
law in striving to rid the world of this ultra-beast. He had not scrupled to
kill a poisonous snake—why should he flinch from killing a man whose
chief equipment was the poison-laden fang of slander? Happily, he could
use a sword in a fashion that might surprise Marigny most wofully. If he did
not succeed in killing the wretch, he would surely disable him, and the
thought sent such a thrill of fierce pleasure through his veins that he

resolutely closed his eyes to the lamentable results that must follow his own
death.
Cynthia, at least, would not suffer; that was all he cared for. No matter what
happened, he did not imagine for one moment that she would marry
Marigny. But that eventuality hardly troubled him at all. The Frenchman
had chosen the sword, and he must abide by its stern arbitrament.
“Home!” he said to Dale, finding his retainer’s eye bent inquiringly on him
when he reached the street. The word had a curiously detached sound in his
ears. “Home!” It savored of rank lunacy to think that within a few short
hours he would be standing on foreign soil, striving desperately with naked
steel to defend his own life and destroy another’s.

CHAPTER XV
THE OUTCOME

Theclouds
fine weather which had endured so long gave way that night. Storm-
swept up from the Atlantic, and England was drenched in rain
when Medenham quitted Charing Cross at 9 p.m. At the eleventh hour he
determined to take Dale with him, but that belated display of wisdom arose
more from the need he felt of human companionship than from any sense of
the absurdity of going alone to fight a duel in a foreign land. He had given
no thought during the fleeting hours to the necessity of communicating with
his relatives in case he fell a victim to Marigny’s rancor, so he devoted
himself now to writing a brief account to the Marquis of Scarland of the
causes that led up to the duel. He concluded with an entreaty that his
brother-in-law should use all means within his power to close down any
inquiry that might result, and pointed out that in this connection Dale would
prove a valuable ally, since his testimony would make clear the fact that the
contest had taken place in France, where duels are looked on with a more
lenient eye than in England.
It was difficult to write legibly in the fast-moving, ill-lighted train, so he
completed the letter on board the steamer, but did not hand it to Dale until
after Calais was reached.
While the steamer was drawing up to her berth, he saw Count Edouard
Marigny among the few passengers on deck. He had turned his back on the
Frenchman at Charing Cross, but the imperturbable Count, noticing Dale in
the half-light of dawn, believed that Medenham had brought a fellow-
countryman as a witness. He strolled up, and said affably:
“Is this gentleman your friend?”
“Yes,” said Medenham, “though not quite in the sense that you mean. He
will accompany me to the hotel, and await my return there.”

The Frenchman was evidently mystified; he smiled, but passed no other
comment. Dale, who heard what was said, now wondered more than ever
what lay behind this sudden journey to France. He had already recognized
Marigny as the owner of the Du Vallon, for he had seen him leaving the
Metropole Hotel at Brighton not many days ago, and had the best of reasons
for regarding him as Viscount Medenham’s implacable enemy. Why, then,
were these two crossing the Channel in company, going together to some
hotel, and leaving him, Dale, to kick his heels in the small hours of the
morning till it pleased them to pick him up again?
In justice to the loyal-hearted chauffeur, plunged quite unknowingly into the
crisis of his life, it must be said that the notion of a duel did not even occur
to his puzzled brain.
Nor was he given much time for speculation. A carriage awaited the trio at
the quay. They carried no luggage to entail a delay at the Customs, and they
drove off at a rapid pace through silent streets in a drenched downpour of
rain. When they reached the Hôtel de la Plage, neither Medenham nor the
Frenchman alighted, but the former handed Dale a letter.
“I may be detained in France somewhat longer than I anticipated,” he said
in a matter-of-fact tone. “If that is so, and you have to return to England
without me, hand this letter to the Marquis of Scarland. Take great care of
it, and keep it in your possession until you are positively assured that I am
unable to go with you.”
These enigmatical instructions bothered their hearer far more than any of
the strange proceedings of the night.
“How shall I know, my lord, whether I am to go back with you or not?” he
asked.
“Oh, of course I shall make that quite clear,” laughed Medenham. “At
present, all you have to do is to wait here a little while.”
His careless demeanor dispelled the first dim shadow of doubt that had
arisen in Dale’s mind. The man was no stranger on the Continent, having
traveled with his employer over the length and breadth of France and
Northern Italy; but the manner of this visit to the Hôtel de la Plage at Calais
was so perplexing that he essayed another question.

“When may I expect you, my lord?” he asked.
Medenham affected to consult his watch.
“Within an hour,” he said; “perhaps a few minutes more. At any rate, you
can arrange to catch the afternoon boat. Meanwhile, make yourself
comfortable.”
By this time, three men, whom he had never seen before, came out from the
hotel. Apparently, they were fully prepared for the coming of the visitors
from England. They greeted Count Marigny cordially, and were introduced
to Medenham. Without more ado, two of them entered the vehicle; the third,
hoisting an umbrella, climbed to the side of the driver, to whom no orders
were given, and the cab rattled rapidly away over the paving-stones, leaving
Dale to gaze disconsolately after it.
Then the vague suspicions in his mind awoke into activity. For one thing, he
had heard one of the strangers alluded to as “Monsieur le Docteur.” For
another, the newcomers carried a curious-looking parcel, or case, of an
elongated shape that suggested unusual contents. Some trick of memory
came to his aid. In an hotel at Lyons he had watched a valet packing just
such an object with the remainder of his employer’s luggage, and was told,
on inquiry, that it contained foils. But why foils? ... at four o’clock in the
morning? ... in a country where men might still requite an outrage by an
appeal to the law of the jungle?
Hastily drawing from his breast pocket the letter intrusted to him, he
examined the superscription. It was addressed simply to the Marquis of
Scarland, and must surely be a document of immense significance, or the
young Viscount would not have brought him all the way from London to act
as messenger rather than intrust it to the post. Each instant Dale’s ideas
became clearer; each instant his heart throbbed with a deeper anxiety. At
last, when the four-wheeler disappeared from sight round an angle of the
rain-soaked boulevard, he yielded to impulse and ran into the hotel. French
people are early risers, but the visitors to Calais that morning were astir at
an hour when most of the hotel staff were still sound asleep. A night porter,
however, was awaiting him at the entrance, and Dale forthwith engaged in a
valiant struggle with the French language in the effort to ascertain, first,
whether the man possessed a bicycle, and, secondly, whether he would lend

it. The Frenchman, of course, broke into a voluble statement out of all
proportion to the demand, but the production of a British sovereign seemed
to interpret matters satisfactorily, because a bicycle was promptly produced
from a shed in the rear of the building.
Dale handed the man the sovereign, jumped on the machine, and rode off
rapidly in the direction taken by the cab. He had no difficulty in turning the
corner round which it had vanished, but a little farther on he erred in
thinking that it had gone straight ahead, since the driver had really turned to
the right again in order to keep clear of the fortifications. Dale traveled at
such a pace that the first long stretch of straight road opening up before his
eyes convinced him of his blunder when no cab was in sight. He raced
back, dismounted at the crossing, examined the road for wheel-marks, and
soon was in the saddle again. He was destined to be thus bothered three
times in all, but, taught wisdom by his initial mistake, he never passed a
crossroad without searching for the recent tracks of wheels.
The rain helped him wherever the roadway was macadamized, but the
paved routes militaires with which Calais abounds offered difficulties that
caused many minutes of delay. At last, he found himself in the open
country, scorching along a sandy road that traversed the low dunes lying
between the town of Calais and Cape Gris Nez. It was not easy to see far
ahead owing to the rain and mist, and he had covered a mile or more
beyond the last of the scattered villas and cottages which form the eastern
suburb of the port, when he saw the elusive cab drawn up by the roadside.
The horse was steaming as though it had been driven at a great pace, and
the driver stood near, smoking a cigarette, and protecting himself from the
persistent downpour by an umbrella.
Dale soon reached the man, and said breathlessly, in his slow French:
“Where are the gentlemen?”
The cabman, who had evidently been paid to hold his tongue, merely
shrugged. Dale, breathing hard, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder,
whereupon the other answered: “I don’t know.”
This, of course, was a lie, and the fact that it was a lie alarmed Dale quite as
much as any of the sinister incidents which had already befallen. For one

thing, there was no house into which five men could have gone. On each
side of the road were bleak sandhills; to the right was the sea, gray and
lowering beneath a leaden-hued sky that seemed to weep above a dead
earth. Here, undoubtedly, was the cab, since Dale could swear to both horse
and man. Where, then, were its occupants?
Having to depend upon his wits, he gave no further heed to the Frenchman,
but, fancying that he saw vestiges of recent footmarks on the right, or
seaward, side of the road, and dragging the bicycle with him, he climbed to
the top of the nearest dune, as he believed that a view of the sands could be
obtained from that point. He was right. The sea was at a greater distance
than he imagined would be the case, but a wide strip of firm sand, its wet
patches glistening dully in the half-light, extended to the water’s edge
almost from the base of the hillock on which he stood.
At first, his anxious eyes strained through the haze in vain, until some
circling seagulls caught his attention, and then he discerned some vague
forms silhouetted against a brighter belt of the sea to the northeast.
Three of the figures were black and motionless, but two gave an eerie
suggestion of whiteness and movement. Abandoning the bicycle, and hardly
realizing why he should be so perturbed, Dale ran forward. Twice he
stumbled and fell amidst the stringy heath grass, but he was up again in a
frenzy of haste, and soon was near enough to the group of men to see that
Medenham and Marigny, bare-headed and in their shirt sleeves, were
fighting with swords.
Dale’s eyes were now half-blinded with perspiration, for he had ridden fast
through the mud from Calais, and this final run through yielding sand and
clinging sedge was exhausting to one who seldom walked as many furlongs
as he had covered miles that morning. But even in his panic of distress he
fancied that his master was pressing the Frenchman severely. It was no
child’s play, this battle with cold steel. The slender, venomous-looking
blades whirled and stabbed with a fearsome vehemence, and the sharp rasp
of each riposte and parry rang out with a horrible suggestiveness in the
moist air. And then, as he lumbered heavily on, Dale thought he saw
something that turned him sick with terror. Almost halting, he swept a hasty
hand across his eyes—then he was sure.

Medenham, with arm extended in a feint in tierce, was bearing so heavily
on his opponent’s rapier that his right foot slipped, and he stumbled badly.
At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra.
His weapon pierced Medenham’s breast high up on the right side. The
stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, already unbalanced, was
driven on to his back on the sand. Marigny wrenched the blade free, and
stooped with obvious intent to plunge it again through his opponent’s body.
A warning shout from each of the three spectators withheld him. He
scowled vindictively, but dared not make that second mortal thrust. These
French gentlemen whom he had summoned from Paris were bound by a
rigid code of honor that would infallibly have caused him to be branded as a
murderer had he completed matters to his satisfaction. Nevertheless, he bent
and peered closely into Medenham’s face, gray now as the sand on which
he was lying.
“I think it will serve,” he muttered to himself. “May the devil take him, but
I thought he would get the better of me!”
He turned away with an affectation of coolness which he was far from
feeling, while the doctor knelt to examine Medenham’s injury. He saw
someone running towards him, but believed it must be one of the witnesses,
and his eyes fell to the stained blade in his hand.
“I rather forgot myself——” he began.
But the excuse was stopped short by a blow on the angle of the jaw that
stretched him by Medenham’s side and apparently as lifeless.
Assuredly, Dale was not versed in the punctilio of the duel, but he knew
how and where to hit with a fist that was hard as one of his own spanners.
He put weight and passion into that punch, and scarcely understood how
effective it was until he found himself struggling in the grasp of two excited
Frenchmen. He cursed both them and Marigny fluently, and vowed the most
horrible vengeance on all three, but soon calmed himself sufficiently to see
that Count Edouard could not stir, and his perturbed wits then sought to
learn the extent of his master’s injury. Still he swore at Marigny.
“Damn you!” he cried hoarsely, “you would have stabbed him as he was
lying there if these pals of yours hadn’t stopped you!”

At last, recovering some degree of self-possession, he assisted the
astounded and rather frightened Frenchmen to carry Medenham to the
waiting carriage. One, who spoke English, asked him to help in rendering a
like service to Marigny, but he refused with an oath, and the others dared
not press him, he looked so fierce and threatening.
“Is he dead?” he asked the doctor brokenly.
There could be no mistaking the meaning of the words, for his red-shot eyes
glared fixedly at the limp body of his master. The other shook his head, but
pointed in the direction of Calais, as though to suggest that the sooner the
injured man was taken to some place where his wound could be properly
attended to, the better would be the faint chance of life that remained. By
this time the seconds were approaching, and Marigny had seemingly
recovered to a slight extent from the knockout blow which he had received
so unexpectedly.
The doctor, who was the only self-collected person present, pointed to the
bicycle.
“Hotel,” he said emphatically. “Go hotel—quick!”
Dale was minded not to desert his master, but the anxiety in the doctor’s
face warned him that the request ought to be obeyed. If the spark of vitality
still flickering in Medenham’s body was to be preserved not a moment
should be lost in preparing a room for his reception.
Gulping down his anguish, Dale mounted and made off. At a distant bend in
the road he turned his head and looked back along that dismal heath. All
five were packed in the cab, and the coachman was urging the unwilling
horse into a trot.

And what of Cynthia?
The break in the weather was the one thing needed to put an abrupt end to
all pretense of enjoyment so far as the Windermere tourists were concerned.
Strained relations existed from the moment Vanrenen arrived at Chester. For

the first time in her life, Cynthia thought that her father was not acting with
the open-eyed justice which she expected from him, and for the first time in
his life Peter Vanrenen harbored an uneasy suspicion that his daughter had
not been quite candid with him. It was impossible, of course, in the close
intimacy of long hours spent together in a touring car, that there should not
be many references to Fitzroy and the Mercury. They were inevitable as the
milestones, and Vanrenen, who was just as prone as other men to look at
facts through his own spectacles, failed to understand how an intelligent girl
like his daughter could remain in constant association with Viscount
Medenham for five days, and yet not discover his identity.
More than once, indeed, notwithstanding the caution exercised by the others
—engaged now in a tacit conspiracy to dispel memories of a foolish
entanglement from the girl’s mind—the identification of Fitzroy with the
young Viscount trembled on the very lip of discovery. Thus, on Friday,
when they had motored to Grasmere, and had gathered before lunch in the
lounge of the delightfully old-fashioned Rothay Hotel, Vanrenen happened
to pick up an illustrated paper, containing a page of pictures of the Scarland
short-horns.
Now, being a busy man, he gave little heed to the terminological
convolutions of names among the British aristocracy. He had not the
slightest notion that the Marquis of Scarland’s wife was Medenham’s sister,
and, with the quick interest of the stock-breeder, he pointed out to Mrs.
Leland an animal that resembled one of his own pedigree bulls, at present
waxing fat on the Montana ranch. For the moment Mrs. Leland herself had
forgotten the relationship between the two men.
“I met the Marquis last year at San Remo,” she said heedlessly. “Anyone
more unlike a British peer you could not imagine. If I remember rightly, he
is a blunt, farmer-like person, but his wife is very charming. By the way,
who was she?”
Such a question could not pass Mrs. Devar unanswered.
“Lady Betty Fitzroy,” she chirped instantly.
Cynthia, who was looking through the window at the square-towered little
church, throned midst the somber yews which shelter the graves of

Wordsworth and his kin, caught the odd conjunction of names—“Betty”
and “Fitzroy.”
“Who is that you are speaking of, father?” she asked, though with a listless
air that Medenham had never seen during any minute of those five happy
days.
“The Marquis of Scarland—the man from whom I bought some cattle a few
years ago,” he said, trusting to the directness of the reply to carry it through
unchallenged.
Cynthia’s brows puckered in a reflective frown.
“That is odd,” she murmured.
“What is odd?” asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the periodical
to hide a smile of embarrassment.
“Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this country.
They call towns after men and men after towns.”
She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who was
married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but checked
the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did not seem to
wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but she did not
gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject on that occasion.
Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many
miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia’s thoughts brooded again on poets and
lonely graves, and the danger passed.
Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter she
wrote from Symon’s Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its hearty
disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion of her. She
heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both agreed that the
comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was rapidly losing its
significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs. Leland’s advent had thrust
her into the background, for the American widow was rich, good-looking,
and cultured, and the flow of small talk between the newcomer and Cynthia
left her as hopelessly out of range as used to be the case when that

domineering Medenham would lean back in the car and say things beyond
her comprehension, or murmur them to Cynthia if she happened to be
sitting by his side.
Luncheon had ended, but the clouds which had been gathering over the lake
country during the morning suddenly poured a deluge over a thirsty land.
Thirlmere and Ullswater and the rest of the glories of Westmoreland that lay
beyond the pass of Dunmail Raise were swallowed up in a fog of rain.
Simmonds, questioned by the millionaire, admitted that a weather-beaten
native had prophesied “a week of it,” more or less.
Four Britons might have sat down and played Bridge stolidly, but three of
this quartette were Americans, and within two hours of the change in the
elements, they were seated in the London-bound train at Windermere
Station.
Not one of them was really displeased because of this rapid alteration in
their plans. Cynthia was ill at ease; Mrs. Leland wished to rejoin her guests
at Trouville; Vanrenen, who was anxious to complete certain business
negotiations in Paris, believed that a complete change of scene and new
interests in life would speedily bring Cynthia back to her own cheery self;
while Mrs. Devar, though the abandonment of the tour meant reversion to a
cheap boarding-house, was not sorry that it had come to an end. In London,
she would be more in her element, and, at any rate, she was beginning to
feel cramped through sitting three in a row in Simmonds’s car, after the
luxurious comfort of two in the tonneau of the Mercury.
So it came to pass that on Friday evening, while Medenham was driving
from Cavendish Square to Charing Cross, Cynthia was crossing London on
a converging line from St. Pancras to the Savoy Hotel. Strange, indeed, was
the play of Fate’s shuttle that it should have so nearly reunited the unseen
threads of their destinies! Again, a trifling circumstance conspired to detain
Vanrenen in London. One of his business associates in Paris, rendered
impatient by the failure of the great man to return as quickly as he had
promised, arrived in England by the afternoon service from the Gare du
Nord, and was actually standing in the foyer of the hotel when Vanrenen
entered with the others. As a result of this meeting, the journey to Paris

arranged for Saturday was postponed till Sunday, and on this trivial base
was destined to be built a very remarkable edifice.
It chanced that Mrs. Leland, too, decided to have a day in London, and she
and Cynthia went out early. They returned to lunch at the hotel, and the girl,
pleading lack of appetite, slipped out alone to buy a copy of Milton’s
poems. From the book-seller’s she wandered into the Embankment
Gardens.
She was a dutiful daughter, and had resolved to obey without question her
father’s stern command not to enter again into communication with a man
of whom he so strongly disapproved. But she was not content, for all that,
and the dripping trees and rain-sodden flowers seemed now to accord with
her distraught mood. The fine, though not bright, interval that had tempted
her forth soon gave way to another shower, and she ran for shelter into the
Charing Cross Station of the Metropolitan Railway. She stood in one of the
doorways looking out disconsolately over the river, when a taxicab drove
up and deposited its occupant at the station. Then some unbidden impulse
led her to hail the driver.
“Take me to Cavendish Square,” she said.
“What number, miss?” he asked.
“No number. Just drive slowly round the square and return to the Savoy
Hotel.”
He eyed her curiously, but made no comment. Soon she was speeding up
Regent Street, bent on gratifying the truly curious whim of seeing what
manner of residence it was that Fitzroy occupied in London. Fate had failed
in her weaving during the previous evening, but on the present occasion she
combined warp and weft without any error.
The cab was crawling past the Fairholme mansion, and Cynthia’s
astonished eyes were regarding its style and general air of magnificence
with some degree of heart-sinking—for it did then seem to be true that Mrs.
Devar’s original estimate of Fitzroy was correct—when a man sprang out of
another taxi in front of the door, and glanced at her while in the very act of
running up the steps. Recognition was mutual. Dale muttered under his
breath a wholly unjustifiable assumption as to his future state, halted

dubiously, and then signaled to Cynthia’s driver to stop. He strode towards
her across the road, and thrust his head through the open window.
“Of course, miss,” he said roughly, “you don’t know what has happened?”
“No,” she said, too greatly surprised to resent his strange manner.
“Well,” he growled, “somebody’s been nearly killed on your account, that’s
all.”
“Somebody,” she repeated, and her lips went white.
“Yes, you ought to guess well enough who it is. He and that rotten
Frenchman fought a duel this morning on the sands near Calais, and
Marinny as good as murdered him.”
Dale’s heart was sore against her as the cause of his master’s plight, but
even in his own distress he was quick to see the shrinking terror in the girl’s
eyes.
“Are you speaking of Mr. Fitzroy?” she demanded. “Are you telling the
truth? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, man, tell me what you mean.”
“I mean what I say, miss,” said he more softly. “I have left him almost at
death’s door in an hotel at Calais. That damned Frenchman ... I beg your
pardon, miss, but I can’t contain myself when I think of him—ran a sword
through him this morning, and would have killed him outright if he hadn’t
been stopped by some other gentlemen. And now, there he is, a-lying in the
hotel, with a doctor and a nurse trying to coax the life back into him, while I
had to scurry back here to tell his people.”
Some women might have shrieked and fainted—not so Cynthia. At that
instant there was one thing to be done, and one only. She saw the open road,
and took it without faltering or thought as to the future.
“When is the next train to Calais?” she asked.
“At nine o’clock to-night, miss.”
“Oh, God!” she wailed under her breath.
Dale’s voice grew even more sympathetic.

“Was you a-thinking of going to him, miss?” he asked.
“Would that I could fly there,” she moaned.
He scratched the back of his ear, for it was by such means that Dale sought
inspiration.
“Dash it all!” he cried. “I wish I had seen you half an hour earlier. There is a
train that leaves Charing Cross at twenty minutes past two. It goes by way
of Folkestone and Boulogne, and from Boulogne one can get easy to Calais.
Anyhow, what’s the use of talkin’—it is too late.”
Cynthia glanced at her watch. It was just twenty-five minutes to three.
“How far is Folkestone?” was the immediate demand generated by her
practical American brain.
“Seventy-two miles,” said the chauffeur, who knew his roads out of
London.
“And what time does the boat leave?”
A light irradiated his face, and he swore volubly.
“We can do it!” he shouted. “By the Lord, we can do it! Are you game?”
Game? The light that leaped to her eyes was sufficient answer. He tore open
the door of the cab, roaring to the driver:
“Round that corner to the right—quick—then into the mews at the back!”
Within two minutes the Mercury was attracting the attention of the police as
it whirled through the traffic towards Westminster Bridge. Dale’s face was
set like a block of granite. He had risked a good deal in leaving his master
at the point of death at Calais; he was now risking more, far more, in
rushing back to Calais again without having discharged the duty which had
dragged him from that master’s bedside. But he thought he had secured the
best physician London could bring to the sufferer’s aid, and the belief
sustained him in an action that was almost heroic. He was a simple-minded
fellow, with a marked taste for speed in both animals and machinery, but he
had hit on one well-defined trait in human nature when he decided that if a

man is dying for the sake of a woman the presence of that woman may cure
when all else will fail.

CHAPTER XVI
THE END OF ONE TOUR: THE BEGINNING OF
ANOTHER

Cynthia found him lying in a darkened room. The nurse had just raised
some of the blinds; a dismal day was drawing to its close, and more light
was needed ere she could distinguish marked bottles, and doses, and the rest
of the appurtenances of dangerous illness.
An English nurse would have forbidden the presence of a stranger; this
French one acted with more discretion if less of strict science.
“Madam is his sister, perhaps?” she whispered.
“No.”
“A relative, then?”
“No; a woman who loves him.”
That heartbroken admission told the whole tale to the quick-witted
Frenchwoman. There had been a duel; one man was seriously injured; the
other, she had heard, was also receiving medical attention in another hotel
—the témoins, wistful to avoid the interrogation of the law, had so arranged
—and here was the woman who had caused the quarrel.
Well, such was the will of Providence! These things had been since man
and woman were expelled from Paradise—for the nurse, though a devout
Catholic, suspected that Genesis had suppressed certain details of the first
fratricide—and would continue, she supposed, until the Millennium.
She nodded cheerfully.
“There is every reason to hope, but he must not be disturbed—not excited,
that is,” she added, seeing the wan agony in Cynthia’s face.

The girl tiptoed to the side of the bed. Medenham’s eyes were closed, but he
was muttering something. She bent and kissed his forehead, and a strange
smile broke through the tense lines of pain. Even in his semi-conscious state
he felt the touch of those exquisite lips.
“My Lady Alice!” he said.
She choked back a sob. He was dreaming of “Comus”—standing with her
in the ruined banqueting hall of Ludlow Castle.
“Yes, your Lady Alice,” she breathed.
A slight quiver shook him.
“Don’t tell Cynthia,” he said brokenly. “She must never know.... Ah, if I
hadn’t slipped, I would have quieted his viperish tongue.... But Cynthia
must not know!”
“Oh, my dear, my dear, Cynthia does know! It is you who know not. Kind
Heaven, let him live! Grant that I may tell him all that I know!”
She could not help it; the words welled forth of their own accord; but the
nurse touched her arm gently.
“It is a little fever,” she whispered with ready sympathy. “Soon it will pass.
He will sleep, and, when he awakes, it is perhaps permissible that you
should speak to him.”

Well, it was permissible. The age of miracles had not passed for those two.
Even the experienced doctor marveled at the strength of a man who at four
o’clock in the morning could have a sword driven through the tissues in
perilous proximity to the right lung, and yet, at nine o’clock on that same
night, was able to announce an unalterable resolution to get up and dress for
breakfast next day. That, of course, was a pleasing fiction intended for
Cynthia’s benefit. It served its purpose admirably. The kindly nurse
displayed an unexpected firmness in leading her to her own room, there to
eat and sleep.

For Cynthia had an ordeal to face. Many things had been said in the car
during that mad rush to Folkestone, and on board the steamer which ferried
Dale and herself to Boulogne she had wrung from the taciturn chauffeur a
full, true, and particular account of Medenham, his family, and his doings
throughout as much of his life as Dale either knew or guessed. By the time
they reached Boulogne she had made up her mind with a characteristic
decision. One long telegram to her father, another to Lord Fairholme,
caused heart-burning and dismay not alone in certain apartments of the
Savoy Hotel, but in the aristocratic aloofness of Cavendish Square and
Curzon Street. As a result, two elderly men, a younger one, in the person of
the Marquis of Scarland, and two tearful women—Lady St. Maur and Mrs.
Leland—met at Charing Cross about one o’clock in the morning to travel
by special train and steamer. Another woman telegraphed from Shropshire
saying that baby was better, and that she would follow by the first steamer
on Sunday. Mrs. Devar did not await developments. She fled, dinnerless, to
some burrow in Bayswater.
These alarums and excursions were accompanied by the ringing of
telephones and the flight of carriages back and forth through muddy
London, and Cynthia was called on to deal with a whole sheaf of telegrams
which demanded replies either to Dover or to Scarland Towers in
Shropshire.
With a man like Vanrenen at one end, however, and a woman like his
daughter at the other, it might be fairly assumed that even the most complex
skein of circumstances might be resolved from its tangle. As a matter of
curious coincidence, the vessel which carried Marigny to England passed in
mid-Channel its sister ship conveying the grief-stricken party of relatives to
France. It happened, too, that the clouds from the Atlantic elected to hover
over Britain rather than France, and when Cynthia stood on the quay to
meet the incoming steamer, a burst of sunshine from the east gave promise
of a fine if somewhat blustery day.
Five pairs of eyes sought her face anxiously while the vessel was warping
to the quay opposite the Gare Maritime. They looked there for tidings, and
they were not disappointed.

“That’s all right,” said Vanrenen with an unwonted huskiness in his voice.
“Cynthia wouldn’t smile if she hadn’t good news.”
“Thank God for that!” muttered the Earl, bending his head to examine a
landing ticket, the clear type of which he was utterly unable to read.
“I never thought for a minute that any Frenchman could kill George,” cried
Scarland cheerfully.
But the two women said nothing, could see nothing, and the white-faced but
smiling Cynthia standing near the shoreward end of the gangway had
vanished in a sudden mist.
Of course, Marigny was right when he foresaw that Vanrenen could not
meet either Medenham or any of his relatives for five minutes without his
“poor little cobweb of intrigue” being dissipated once and forever.
With the marvelous insight that every woman possesses when dealing with
the affairs of the man she loves, Cynthia combined the eloquence of an
orator with the practiced skill of a clever lawyer in revealing each turn and
twist of the toils which had enveloped her since that day in Paris when her
father happened to suggest in Marigny’s hearing that she might utilize his
hired car for a tour in England, while he concluded the business that was
detaining him in the French Capital. Nothing escaped her; she unraveled
every knot; Medenham’s few broken words, supplemented by the letter to
his brother-in-law which he told her to obtain from Dale, threw light on all
the dark places.
But the gloom had fled. It was a keenly interested, almost light-hearted,
little party that walked through the sunshine to the Hôtel de la Plage.

Dale, abashed, sheepish, yet oddly confident that all was for the best in a
queer world, met the Earl of Fairholme later in the day; his lordship, who
had been pining for someone to pitch into, addressed him sternly.
“This is a nice game you’ve been playing,” he said. “I always thought you
were a man of steady habits, a little given to horse-racing perhaps, but

otherwise a decent member of the community.”
“So I was before I met Viscount Medenham, my lord,” was the daring
answer. For Dale was no fool, and he had long since seen how certain
apparently hostile forces had adapted themselves to new conditions.
“Before you left him, you mean,” growled the Earl. “What sort of sense was
there in letting him fight a duel?—it could have been stopped in fifty
different ways.”
“Yes, my lord, but I never suspicioned a word of it till he went off in the cab
with them——”
The Earl held up a warning finger.
“Hush,” he said, “this is France, remember, and you are the foreigner here.
Where is my son’s car?”
“In the garage at Folkestone, my lord.”
“Well, you had better cross by an early boat to-morrow and bring it here.
You understand all the preliminaries, I suppose? Find out from the Customs
people what deposit is necessary, and come to me for the money.”
So it happened that when Medenham was able to take his first drive in the
open air, the Mercury awaited him and Cynthia at the door of the hotel. It
positively sparkled in the sunlight; never was car more spick and span. The
brasswork scintillated, each cylinder was rhythmical, and a microscope
would not have revealed one speck of dust on body or upholstery.

On a day in July—for everybody agreed that not even a marriage should be
allowed to interfere with the Scottish festival of St. Grouse—that same
shining Mercury with the tonneau decorously cased in glass for the hour,
drew up at the edge of a red carpet laid down from curb to stately porch of
St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Dale turned a grinning face to the
doorway when Viscount Medenham led his bride down the steps through a
shower of rice and good wishes.

Wedding breakfasts and receptions are all “much of a muchness,” as the
Mad Hatter said to another Alice, and it was not until the Mercury was
speeding north by west to Scarland Towers, “lent to the happy pair for the
honeymoon” while Betty took the children to recuperate at the seaside, that
Cynthia felt she was really married.
“I have a bit of news for you,” said her husband, taking a letter from his
pocket. “I received a letter by this morning’s post. A heap of others remain
unopened till you and I have time to go through them; but this one caught
my attention, and I read it while I was dressing.”
He had an excellent excuse for putting his arm round her waist while he
held the open sheet so that both might peruse it at the same time. It ran:
My Dear Viscount—Of course I meant to kill you, but fate
decided otherwise. Indeed, with my usual candor, which by this
time you may have learned to admire, I may add that only the
special kind of dog’s luck which attaches itself to members of
my family, saved me from being killed by you. But that is
ancient history now.
I am glad to hear that your wound was not really serious. There
was no sense in merely crippling you—my only chance lay in
procuring your untimely demise. Having failed, however, I want
to tell you, with the utmost sincerity, that I never had the
slightest intention of carrying out my abominable threat in
regard to the fair lady who is now Viscountess Medenham. Were
you other than a heavy-witted and thick-skinned Briton, you
would have known that I was goading you into issuing a
challenge.
This piece of information is my wedding present; it is all I can
give, because, metaphorically speaking, I haven’t a sou!
I am, as you see, domiciled in Brussels, where my car is
attached by an unsympathetic hotel proprietor. Still, I am devoid
of rancor, and mean to keep a sharp eye for a well-favored and
well-dowered wife; such a one, in fact, as you managed to snap
up under my very nose.

With a thousand compliments, I am,
Yours very sincerely,
Edouard Marigny.
P.S.—Devar went “steerage” to the United States when he heard
of our affair. He thought it was all up with you, and with him.
“The wretch!” murmured Cynthia. “Can he really believe even yet that I
would have married him?”
“I don’t care tuppence what he believes,” said Medenham, giving her a
reassuring hug. “Indeed, I have a mind to write and ask him how much he
owes in that hotel. Don’t you see, my dear, that if it hadn’t been for
Marigny there was a chance that I might have left you at Bristol.”
“Never!” cooed Cynthia.
“Well, now I have got you, I am beginning to imagine all sorts of terrible
possibilities which might have parted us. I remember thinking, when my
foot slipped....”
“Oh, don’t!” she murmured. “I can’t bear to hear of that. Sometimes, in
Calais, I awoke screaming, and then I knew I had seen it in my dreams....
There, you have disarranged my hat!... But I don’t think much of your
budget, anyhow; mine is a great deal more to the point. My father told me
this morning that he is sure he will feel very lonely now. He never meant,
he said, to put anyone in my dear mother’s place, but he will miss me so
greatly—that, perhaps, Mrs. Leland——”
“By Jove,” cried Medenham, “that will be splendid! I like Mrs. Leland. At
one time, do you know, I rather fancied she might become my step-mother,
now it seems I shall have to greet her as a mother-in-law. She was bound to
come into the family one way or another. When is it to be?”
Cynthia laughed delightedly.
“Father looked so confused when I asked him. Say, wouldn’t it be a joke if
Simmonds brought them to Scarland Towers one day, and they were
announced by some solemn footman as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vanrenen’?”

“Cynthia, you know,” he teased her.
“I don’t know, but I am a good guesser,” she said.
And she was.

THE END

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