"It will be best, sir," the man agreed. "There is a train in about an hour." They walked out on to the road where a one-horse buggy was waiting. The driver took no more notice of them than to terminate, in a leisurely way, his conversation with a railway porter, and unhitch the horse. Mr. Sabin took the seat by his side, and they drove off. It was a very beautiful road, and Mr. Sabin was quite content to lean back in his not uncomfortable seat and admire the scenery. For the most part it was of a luxuriant and broken character. There were very few signs of agriculture, save in the immediate vicinity of the large newly-built houses which they passed every now and then. At times they skirted the side of a mountain, and far below them in the valley the river Leine wound its way along like a broad silver band. Here and there the road passed through a thick forest of closely-growing pines, and Mr. Sabin, holding his cigarette away from him, leaned back and took long draughts of the rosinous, piney odour. It was soon after emerging from the last of these that they suddenly came upon a house which moved Mr. Sabin almost to enthusiasm. It lay not far back from the road, a very long two-storied white building, free from the over-ornamentation which disfigured most of the surrounding mansions. White pillars in front, after the colonial fashion, supported a long sloping veranda roof, and the smooth trimly-kept lawns stretched almost to the terrace which bordered the piazza. There were sun blinds of striped holland to the southern windows, and about the whole place there was an air of simple and elegant refinement, which Mr. Sabin found curiously attractive. He broke for the first time the silence which had reigned between him and the driver. "Do you know," he inquired, "whose house that is?" The man flipped his horse's ears with the whip. "I guess so," he answered. "That is the old Peterson House. Mrs. James B. Peterson lives there now." Mr. Sabin felt in his breast pocket, and extracted therefrom a letter. It was a coincidence undoubtedly, but the fact was indisputable. The address scrawled thereon in Felix's sprawling hand was:-- "MRS. JAMES B. PETERSON, "Lenox. "By favour of Mr. Sabin." "I will make a call there," Mr. Sabin said to the man. "Drive me up to the house." The man pulled up his horse. "What, do you know her?" he asked. Mr. Sabin affected to be deeply interested in a distant point of the landscape. The man muttered something to himself and turned up the drive. "You have met her abroad, maybe?" he suggested. Mr. Sabin took absolutely no notice of the question. The man's impertinence was too small a thing to annoy him, but it prevented his asking several questions which he would like to have had answered. The man muttered something about a civil answer to a civil question not being much to expect, and pulled up his horse in front of the great entrance porch.