Each succeeding day seemed to complete the sum of Hilda Muirhead's hopes. In addition to motor-car rides to Southport, the scene of Raife's first meeting with "the other woman," Gilda Tempest, Hilda learnt the joys of riding behind good horses. Raife was an expert whip and drove a tandem as an expert. The countryside was again alive, now that the wayward young man had returned to reside among them. There were dinner-parties at the Park, and garden-parties, where Hilda was introduced to the county families, some of whom were amiable, and even affable, whilst others were not. It was a meeting of disappointment to many of the stately dames, and sometimes frigid daughters, that an American woman should have been selected to reign as queen at the beautiful old home, which, hitherto, had been regarded as a stronghold of English womanhood. These matters were, however, of slight consequence to Hilda, whose happiness was supreme in the possession of the love of the handsome and dashing young aristocrat, whom Fortune had thrown in her way. She captured the hearts of all the men, and a large proportion of the women, with her frank and ingratiating manners. She over-ruled convention without destroying good taste; the tenants and townspeople were completely won over by her cordiality and good nature, which was frequently lavish. The old landlord, Twisegood, added to his evening custom by narrating the free and unconventional manner in which she made her first entry into his house. The old town of Tunbridge had not been so gay since the days of farthingales, frills and furbelows. Hilda excelled in most sports. At tennis, golf, and every pastime, she led the way, and there was renewed life in clubs that had become, in a sense, rusty for want of what is generally called "fresh blood." Raife Remington, the woman-hater of a few months ago, had become the most courtly of lovers, and it only needed the joy of marriage bells to complete the symposium of human delight. In human affairs, however, it is not to be supposed that Fate will not be fickle, and cast a cloud to destroy the perfection of desire. Jealousy has ever been an accompaniment to love, and it draws no distinction between the yokel and the aristocrat. When Harold Brookman, in the competition flight from the Hendon aerodrome to Manchester, came to grief and descended rather hurriedly in the home-croft of Aldborough Park, it was Hilda who, by chance, extricated him from a tangled mass of machinery. With a sense of initiative and promptitude she obtained assistance, and Harold Brookman was installed in a room at the Park, pending his recovery from the crumpled state in which he found himself.