"Oh! we are all very busy, sir. Wilcox is experimenting with his new airship. At last he has had some encouragement from the Government, and we are all delighted. My shops are busy. We sent three planes to Spain yesterday. King Alphonso ordered them when he was over in the early spring." "Austin has promised to take me up for a flight one day, dad!" exclaimed the girl enthusiastically. "He wants to ask you if he may." Her father did not reply for some moments. Then he said judiciously: "Well, dear, we must see. Perhaps he might take you just a little way-- once round the aerodrome--eh?" "Of course not far," said his daughter, glancing significantly at her lover. "There is no risk, Mr Monkton, I assure you. Miss Sheila is very anxious to go up, and I shall be most delighted to take her--with your consent, of course," Wingate said. "My suggestion is just a circuit or two around the aerodrome. We are completing a new machine this week, and after I've tried her to see all is safe. I'd like to take Sheila up." "We must see--we must see," replied her indulgent father, assuming a non-committal attitude. He, however, knew that in all England no man knew more of aerial dynamics than Austin Wingate, and, further, that beneath his apparently careless exterior with his immaculate clothes and his perfectly-brushed hair was a keen and scientific mind, and that he was working night and day directing the young and rising firm of aeroplane makers at Hendon, of which he was already managing director. Sheila's meeting with him had been the outcome of one of his experiments. One afternoon in the previous summer he had been driving a new hydroplane along the Thames, over the Henley course, when he had accidentally collided with a punt which Sheila, in a white cotton dress, was manipulating with her pole. In an instant the punt was smashed and sunk, and Miss Monkton and her two girl companions were flung into the water. After a few minutes of excitement all three were rescued, and the young inventor, on presenting himself to express his deep regret, found himself face to face with "Monkton's daughter," as Sheila was known in Society. The girl with her two friends, after changing their clothes at the Red Lion, had had tea with the author of the disaster, who was unaware of their names, and who later on returned to London, his hydroplane being badly damaged by the collision. Six months went past, yet the girl's face did not fade from Austin Wingate's memory. He had been a fool, he told himself, not to ascertain her name and address. He had given one of the girls his card, and she had told him her name was Norris. That was all he knew. On purpose to ascertain who they were he had been down to Henley a fortnight after the accident, but as the girls had not stayed at the Red Lion, but were evidently living in some riverside house or bungalow, farther up the river, he could obtain no knowledge or trace of her.