“Oh, it’s too soon!” she said, putting up her hand to shield her eyes from his lamp. “Not a word to say tonight; but tomorrow--at four o’clock--we shall meet and talk it over. You have done beautifully--superbly!” she continued. “I was looking through the window when they dragged you off upstairs. And I heard every word everybody said! Isn’t it perfectly glorious?--particularly Zaliska! What an awful mistake it would have been if we’d left her out! Back, sir! I’m on my way!” Before he could speak, her car shot forward. He ran to his machine and flung himself into it; but Arabella was driving like a king’s messenger. Her car, a low-hung gray roadster, moved with incredible speed. The rear light rose until it became a dim red star on the crest of a steep hill, and a second later it blinked him good-by as it dipped down on the farther side. He gained the hilltop and let the machine run its maddest. When he reached the bottom he was sure he was gaining on the flying car, but suddenly the guiding light vanished. He checked his speed to study the trail more carefully, found that he had lost it, turned back to a crossroad where Arabella had plunged more deeply into the hills, and was off again. The road was a strange one and hideously soggy. The tail light of Arabella’s car brightened and faded with the varying fortunes of the two machines; but he made no appreciable gain. She was leading him into an utterly strange neighborhood, and after half a dozen turns he was lost. Then his car landed suddenly on a sound piece of road and he stepped on the accelerator. The rain had ceased and patches of stars began to blink through the broken clouds, but as his hopes rose the light he was following disappeared; and a moment later he was clamping on the brakes. The road had landed him at the edge of a watery waste, a fact of which he became aware only after he had tumbled out of his machine and walked off a dock. Some one yelled to him from a house at the water’s edge and threatened to shoot if he didn’t make himself scarce. And it was not Arabella’s voice! He slipped and fell on the wet planks, and his incidental remarks pertaining to this catastrophe were translated into a hostile declaration by the owner of the voice. A gun went off with a roar and Farrington sprinted for his machine. “If you’ve finished your target practice,” he called from the car with an effort at irony, “maybe you’ll tell what this place is!” The reply staggered him: “This pond’s on Mr. Banning’s place. It’s private grounds and ye can’t get through here. What ye doin’ down here anyhow?” Farrington knew what he was doing. He was looking for Arabella, who had apparently vanished into thin air; but the tone of the man did not encourage confidences. He was defeated and chagrined, to say nothing of being chilled to the bone. “You orto turned off a mile back there; this is a private road,” the man volunteered grudgingly, “and the gate ain’t going to be opened no more tonight.”