Carfax laughed and turned to his seat-mate. “You see how inhospitable he really is when he isn’t parading his company manners.” Then to the young women behind him: “Mr. Tregarvon won’t let us drive down, but if you young ladies would care to see the wheels go round at a moment when, as it seems, they have just stopped going round, we can walk.” There was an instant chorus of walking votes, and Carfax got out to open the tonneau door. Tregarvon stood aside, scowling as any working-boss might when his difficulties are about to be made a raree-show for the frivolous. Miss Richardia slipped out of the mechanician’s seat on her own side of the car, unassisted, but when the sight-seeing contingent marshalled itself for the descent into the tangle, she did not join it. “You are not going with the others?” said Tregarvon ungraciously. “There are enough of them for you to be spiteful at, without adding me to the number,” she returned, adding: “Besides, I wanted to speak to you. It was I who asked Mr. Carfax to drive down here.” She had come around to his side of the car and he looked her squarely in the eyes. “Be careful what you say to me to-day, Richardia: I am not the same man that I was a few days ago.” “_Boo!_” she said, with the little grimace that always set his blood afire; “you make me shivery when you look and talk that way. I came to try to help you--not to be frozen.” “Say it,” he commanded. “How can I, when you won’t let me? I have a piece of news for you--something that I imagine you’d like to know. Have you written to Miss Wardwell lately?” “Yes; Sunday night in Chattanooga.” “And this is Wednesday: have you had a reply?” “No; not yet. What is your news?” “I was just wondering whether I’d better not keep it to myself, after all. Mr. Carfax said you were in a bad temper, but he didn’t tell me that you were utterly impossible.” Tregarvon’s scowl deepened. “Impossible? Of course, I am impossible. What would you expect, in the circumstances?” At this, she smiled up at him and said: “I’m beginning to be a little deaf now--charitably deaf.” “I don’t need charity,” he broke out hotly. “All I need is a chance to fight for my own hand. Tell me one thing: have you promised to marry Poictiers yet?” “Have you any right to ask me such a question as that?” “I have; the best right in the world: you know I have.” She met his half-angry, half-passionate gaze calmly. “I know that you are about to make a shipwreck of your better self,” she averred. Then: “Don’t you know that there are some things that are hard for a woman to forgive--or, having forgiven them, to forget?” “I am in no mood to split hairs with you to-day,” he grated. “You are thinking of Elizabeth: she knows already what she will have to forgive. I told her in the letter I wrote Sunday night.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “You are tearing the anchors loose, one by one. Will nothing make you realize what you are doing?”