He spoke to Celine, but Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Tracy both stepped back with Celine, leaving Jeff a fair field. It did not take him long to open the door, and with an “I told you I could,” he disappeared, leaving Mrs. Tracy no better off than she was before. She could not open the door after it was shut, for she tried it until she was tired, and scorning to ask Jeff to teach her, gave it up, saying she supposed she was foolish in wishing to look at her diamonds whenever she chose without calling on any one to assist her, but something made her very nervous about them. “Dot gets nervous spells, too, about nothin’. It’s the way of wimmen,” Uncle Zacheus said. “I guess we better not let Mark know we tinkered with his safe. He’d be awful mad.” “I think you defer too much to the opinion of an employee. It spoils them,” Mrs. Tracy suggested, and Uncle Zach replied, “Can’t spile Mark,—the best feller ever born. I’d trust him with my life.” Meanwhile Mark was feeling that he was as near Paradise as he would ever be until he reached its gates. It was a good deal to be sitting side by side with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and it was still more to have the beautiful girl as friendly and gracious as she was, treating him as if she had known him for years, and seldom looking back to speak to Craig, whom she left entirely to Alice. She professed to be enchanted with everything, and her face glowed with excitement. The spirit, which in one of her confidences with Alice she had ascribed to his satanic majesty whom she called the _old gentleman_ was upon her, and she could no more help flirting with Mark Hilton than she could have helped breathing. Craig’s reserve had piqued her, but while ignoring him she didn’t forget him at all, or lose a word he was saying to Alice. He was the fish she meant to draw into her net eventually, but she was very happy watching Mark getting more and more entangled in her meshes. It was a lovely summer afternoon and owing to the heavy rain of the previous night the road was neither dusty nor rough, and for a time Paul and Virginia did credit to Uncle Zach’s praise of them and trotted on without a sign of lagging. Mark still held the lines, but when they had crossed the river and the causeway and were out among the hills Helen said to him, “Don’t you believe the bloods have digested that two quarts of oats by this time and had the wind taken out of their sails sufficiently for me to drive.” She held out her hands for the lines which Mark gave to her, asking if she had ever driven much. “No,” she said, “but I want to learn, and I like to drive fast and feel the wind on my face. Touch them, please, with the whip.”