* * * * * Forty-five minutes later we sped up the shadowy drive and stopped by our own front door. 'Pierrette' switched off the engine and sat looking miserably before her. "I wish," she said slowly, "I wish you'd let me go with you. I did hate leaving him so, and I'd feel----" With a hand on the door, I touched her pale cheek. "My darling," said I, "you've done more than your bit--far more, and you're going straight to bed. As for leaving him--well, you know how much I liked it, but I know when I'm done." "_'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone...._" Delivered with obvious emotion in a muffled baritone voice, Moore's famous words seemed to come from beneath us. Adèle and I stared at one another with starting eyes.... Then I fell out of the car and clawed at the flap of the dickey.... My hands were trembling, but I had it open at last. Her head pillowed upon a spare tube, the ruin of 'An English Rose' regarded me coyly. "I think you might have knocked," she said, simpering. "Supposing I'd been _en deshabille_!" CHAPTER XII HOW A TELEGRAM CAME FOR JILL, PIERS DEMANDED HIS SWEETHEART, AND I DROVE AFTER MY WIFE _Rome._ _My darling Jill,_ _It's all finished now, and I can start for Paris to-morrow. I must stay there one night, to sign some papers, and then I can leave for Pau. And on next Sunday morning as ever is, we'll have breakfast together. Perhaps---- No, I won't say it. Any way, Sunday morning at latest. Everyone's been awfully kind, and--you'll never guess what's coming--Cousin Leslie's turned out a white man. He's the one, you know, who brought the suit. The day I got back from Irikli I got a note from him, saying that, while he couldn't pretend he wasn't sorry he'd lost his case, he knew how to take a beating, and, now that it was all over, couldn't we be friends, and asking me to come and dine with him and his wife at the Grand Hotel. Old Vissochi didn't want me to go, and kept quoting something out of Virgil about 'fearing the Greeks,' but, of course, I insisted. And I am so glad I did. Leslie and his wife were simply splendid. Nobody could have been nicer, and considering that, if he'd won, he'd 've had the title, estates, money and everything, I think it speaks jolly well for them both. They've got two ripping little boys, and they were frightfully interested to hear about you. They'd no idea, of course, but I just had to tell them. They were so astonished at first they could hardly speak. And then Mrs. Trunk picked up her glass and cried out, "Hurray, Hurray," and they both drank to us both, and everybody was staring, and Leslie got quite red with embarrassment at their having made such a scene. Then they made me tell them what you looked like, and I did my best, and they laughed and said I was caking it on, so I showed them your photograph. And then Mrs. Trunk made me show her a letter of yours,