He kissed her again and again, and could have held her there seemingly forever; but they were driven apart by a curious humming sound which bore a singular resemblance to the purr of a powerful automobile climbing a steep hill. Marguerite disengaged herself from her lover's embrace with a flushing self-consciousness that was, in itself, vastly attractive. "Bob," she murmured, stooping to pick up a fallen hat and mackintosh, "miracles are happening. Here are you and I forgetting a world in which evil things find a place, and here is a motor-car crossing Elmdale moor for the first time in history." "It would not surprise me in the least if the visitant proved to be a flying-machine," he laughed, finding it hard to withdraw his ardent gaze from those flushed cheeks and that tangled mass of brown hair. But the insistent drumming of an engine grew ever louder, and soon a long, low-built touring car swept into view over the last undulation. Apparently, it was untenanted save by a chauffeur, and Armathwaite's brain, recovering its balance after a whirl of delirium, was beginning to guess at a possible explanation of this strange occurrence, when the car slowed as it neared them, and finally halted. "Are you Mr. Armathwaite, sir?" inquired the chauffeur. "Yes." The man lifted his cap. "This is the car you ordered from York last night, sir." "How thoughtful of you to follow!" cried Armathwaite, overjoyed by this quite unexpected bit of good fortune. He had not only forgotten that the car was on order--an impulse of the moment when he realized how tied he and all others were to the house if anything in the nature of a sudden and rapid journey came on the _tapis_--but, in any event, he had not looked for its arrival before mid-day, and the hour was yet barely ten o'clock. "Your servants thought you might need me, sir," explained the man, "so I came after you. It's a scorcher of a road for the first mile, but the rest isn't so bad, if it keeps in the same condition." Now, what had actually happened was this. The chauffeur had reached the Grange about twenty minutes after Armathwaite's departure. At that moment Smith was chaining and padlocking the gate, but Betty heard the snorting of the car, and came to find out its cause. When the chauffeur told her that he was there in response to an order, the quick-witted girl told him to hurry up the moor road. He looked at it, and grinned. "What! Take a valuable machine over a track like that! Not me!" he said. "Can't it go there?" she inquired. "It can go anywhere, for that matter." "Are you afraid, then?" "Afraid of what? D'ye think I want to twist an axle or smash a wheel?" Then one of the laboring men joined in. "I reckon you don't know t' maister," he said. "He wouldn't care a pin if you smashed yourself, but you've got to obey orders. He's one of the sort who has his own way. Good pay, no beer, an' hard work is _his_ motter. It is, an' all."