Smith drove the borrowed runabout back to town in sober silence, and the glorious beauty in the seat beside him did not try to make him talk. Perhaps she, too, was busy with thoughts of her own. At all events, when Smith had helped her out of the car at the hotel entrance and had seen her as far as the elevator, she thanked him half absently and took his excuse, that he must return the runabout to Maxwell's garage, without laying any further commands upon him. Just as he was turning away, a bell-boy came across from the clerk's desk with a telegram for Miss Richlander. Smith had no excuse for lingering, but with the air thick with threats he made the tipping of the boy answer for a momentary stop-gap. Miss Verda tore the envelope open and read the enclosure with a fine-lined little frown coming and going between her eyes. "It's from Tucker Jibbey," she said, glancing up at Smith. "Some one has told him where we are, and he is following us. He says he'll be here on the evening train. Will you meet him and tell him I've gone to bed?" At the mention of Jibbey, the money-spoiled son of the man who stood next to Josiah Richlander in the credit ratings, and Lawrenceville's best imitation of a _flâneur_, Smith's first emotion was one of relief at the thought that Jibbey would at least divide time with him in the entertainment of the bored beauty; then he remembered that Jibbey had once considered him a rival, and that the sham "rounder's" presence in Brewster would constitute a menace more threatening than all the others put together. "I can't meet Tucker," he said bluntly. "You know very well I can't." "That's so," was the quiet reply. "Of course, you can't. What will you do when he comes?--run away?" "No; I can't do that, either. I shall keep out of his way, if I can. If he finds me and makes any bad breaks, he'll get what's coming to him. If he's worth anything to you, you'll put him on the stage in the morning and send him up into the mountains to join your father." "The idea!" she laughed. "He's not coming out here to see father. Poor Tucker! If he could only know what he is in for!" Then: "It is beginning to look as if you might have to go still deeper in debt to me, Montague. There is one more thing I'd like to do before I leave Brewster. If I'll promise to keep Tucker away from you, will you drive me out to the Baldwins' to-morrow afternoon? I want to see the colonel's fine horses, and he has invited me, you know." Smith's eyes darkened. "There is a limit, Verda, and you've reached it," he said quickly. "If the colonel invited you to Hillcrest, it was because you didn't leave him any chance not to. I resign in favor of Jibbey," and with that he handed her into the waiting elevator and said: "Good night." XX Tucker Jibbey