“You are the leading conspirator for my happiness.” He bowed across to Julia. Florence divined who might be expected to fill the fourth place in the automobile. It might have been that possibility which ruffled Cissy Fitz Hugh’s forehead. But Cissy’s endeavors never failed from lack of confidence. “Well, really,” she observed pathetically, “it’s such a magnificent morning, I think I shall make _one_ effort to ride over. Don’t you think it’s an _ideal_ morning for a gallop?” She appealed to Longacre. “Well, you make it seem so,” he said, with one of his gentle, misleading looks. It misled both Cissy and Julia. It left one complaisant, the other a little more like a princess than usual. But Florence knew just what that look signified. When he was going to escape he was always like that. Unconcerned about the little arrangements of life, he habitually took them as they were offered, but Florence knew he had no idea of riding over as Cissy’s escort. She suspected he had lost the chance of a fourth place in Julia’s arrangement. How he intended to escape Cissy she guessed from his look at herself, questioning her. She gave him a vague, inquiring smile, and turned to answer Thair. She knew Longacre would speak to her after breakfast. He did. In the general exodus to the veranda she found him at her elbow, a little quizzical, a little puzzled. “Are we going to gallop over together?” he asked, as if he were stating a certainty. “Why, aren’t you with Mrs. Fitz Hugh?” she said, with light surprise. “I?” He was puzzled to know if she were serious. “Lord, I’m going to dodge her!” “With me? But, Tony—I’m so sorry—I’ve promised Mr. Holden to drive over with him.” “Holden!” Longacre looked, as he felt, outraged. “But I thought, of course—” “Why?” Florence wondered. “_Did_ you speak of it?” “No—but I thought, of course, that we would—oh, well!” he flung out, sulky as a boy. “Oh, _here_ he is!” Cissy Fitz Hugh, compressed into her habit like jelly into a mold, was upon them. Her hand was lightly on Longacre’s sleeve. “Mr. Colton wants to put me up,” she complained, “but _I_ said no one shall—but _my_ cavalier!” “Now, really, Mr. Longacre,” Mrs. Budd’s voice burst forth from the other side, “I don’t know what sort of a mount you prefer.” She indicated the group of horses crowding away from the gibbering road-machine that ground into the porte-cochère with Thair’s hand on the throttle. Thair’s humorous regard was for Longacre’s predicament. Too late, it seemed to say, to escape from such a veteran as Cissy. When the riders headed the procession down the steep dip of the drive, Cissy’s blonde head was nodding and ducking to Longacre’s passive profile with such calm assurance of how cleverly she had managed it, that Florence Essington could not repress a smile.