Carfax stopped laughing suddenly and sprang out of the car. “It’s no joke!” he snapped. “It’s up to us, you wild ass of the desert--do you hear? Stop your braying and listen to me: we’ve got to meet her over there on that platform just as if we had been watching every train for a week! There is the whistle: come along and invent your fairy-tale on the run!” They did not crowd too eagerly to the front when the three-car train drew up to the platform. There were terms to be agreed upon; things which might be said, and things which must not be said. Thus it happened that an exceedingly handsome young woman, in a modish travelling hat and a brown coat, and followed by a French maid bearing impedimenta, was helped from the car-step by the brakeman. “Charge!” Carfax commanded, in a hoarse whisper; but before they could do it, Miss Richardia slipped through the ranks of the platform loungers, put her arms quickly about the handsome young woman and kissed her, with an “Oh, you dear thing!” to go with the affectionate welcome. Tregarvon saw, gasped, swallowed hard, and the smile of greeting which he had called up for the emergency turned into a shocked grin. “Get out in the road there and chunk me!” he whispered to Carfax. And then: “Poictiers, I’m a ruined man! They were together in the Boston music factory. Elizabeth has told me a hundred times how she chummed with a charming little Southerner--without naming any names! And I’ve been writing her--oh, I tell you, I’m a dead man. All you have to do now is to get a wreath to lay on my coffin!” “You’ll be needing the coffin if you don’t buck up and catch the step!” hissed Carfax. Wherewith he dragged his companion masterfully into the circle of welcomings. The golden youth neither gave nor received the kiss of greeting; and he pointedly looked another way when Miss Wardwell offered her cheek for Tregarvon’s cousinly salute. Then he found himself shaking hands with Richardia’s father; realized vaguely that the judge was taxing him reproachfully for not having consented to occupy one of the many bed-rooms at Westwood House the night before, instead of returning to Highmount; realized also that Miss Wardwell was rallying Tregarvon gayly upon his discomfiture accomplished by means of the jesting telegram. “Surely, it didn’t mislead you, too, did it, Poictiers?” she questioned, turning to Tregarvon’s accomplice. “Vance is trying to tell me that you took it harder than he did.” Then she explained to Judge Birrell: “I sent a wire to these two from Chattanooga, you know, asking them if they could put me and Clotilde up at the Coalville hotel--by the way, Cousin Vance, where _is_ the hotel?” Then again to the judge: “You see, I guessed, from what Richardia said in her last letter, that they didn’t know I was invited to Westwood House. Fancy it! they got the telegram only a few minutes ago!”