As the front door slammed at his back, he pulled up smartly to escape collision with the girl on the stoop. He looked at and through her, barely conscious of her pretty, pallid face and the light of recognition in her eyes. Then, with a murmured apology, he dodged neatly round her, swung down the steps, and frantically hailed a passing taxicab. Joan, dashed and disappointed, saw the vehicle swing in to the curb and heard Matthias, as he clambered in, direct the driver to the Pennsylvania Station with all possible haste. She stared after the dwindling cab disconsolately. He hadn't even known her! In another minute she would have turned her back on the house and sought lodgings elsewhere, but the door abruptly opened a second time, revealing Madame Duprat, a forbidding but imperative figure, upon the threshold. Timidly in her confusion the girl made some semi-articulate enquiry as to the address of Miss Maizie Dean. To her astonishment and consternation, the landlady unbent and smiled. "Ah!" she exclaimed with unction. "Mademoiselle is the friend of Monsieur Matthias, is it not? Very good. Will you not be pleased to enter? It is but this afternoon that the Sisters Dean have returned so altogether unexpectedly." VII Alone in the body of a touring-car, Helena Tankerville, a slender and fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly, and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train. She was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her while to be aware. None the less, she was conscious that she was visible. . . . A faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines. Immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the west. A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where, panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in beside the platform. Incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men in apparently comfortable circumstances, well dressed to the standards of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon, heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, 'buses, surreys, smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.