They walked slowly back to the verandah, but paused a space before going into the light and crowds where a waltz had just begun--and as they waited a hotel page came dodging between the smoking, chatting loungers calling her name--"Miss Conscience Williams--Miss Conscience Williams," and waving a yellow telegraph envelope. The girl's face paled a little as she took the message from the urchin's hand and her eyes widened in an expression of fear. But she tore the covering and drew out the sheet deliberately, reading in the yellow light that flooded through a window. Then an almost inaudible groan came from her lips and she stood holding the paper so loosely that it slipped from her fingers and drifted to the floor. Stuart retrieved it and handed it to her, but she only commanded in a stunned voice, "Read it." The man stepped from the shadow to the light and read: "Your father had paralytic stroke. He wants to see you." It was signed by initials which Stuart inferred to be those of the elderly aunt of whom she spoken. He laid his hand very gently on her arm and turned her a step to the side so that she passed out of the broad band of window-light and stood in the shadow. The blaze from the interior gave too much the effect of a spotlight playing on her eyes and lips and brow, for him to be willing that the idling crowds of strollers should read what he read there. He knew that in a moment she would regain control sufficiently to face even the fuller publicity inside, but during that moment she had the right to the limited privacy afforded by the dark shadow of the tiled veranda. She stood leaning against the wall for a moment, then she straightened herself with an effort and pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples. "What can you get out of your car?" she asked. And the man answered quickly, "As much speed as the roads let me--I have done sixty." "Please take me home." The words came abruptly and with undisguised wretchedness, "and take me _fast_." CHAPTER V Twenty minutes later Stuart Farquaharson swung himself to the driver's seat of his low-hung roadster, and threw on the switch, while Billy Stirling and the others stood at the curb, waving farewells and finding nothing suitable to say. The car went purring through the quiet streets where gabled houses slept under the moon, but having passed the town limits, leaped into a racing pace along the road for Orleans. Stuart made no effort to talk and Conscience spoke only at long intervals. She was gazing ahead and her eyes were wide and wet with tears. Once she leaned over to say: "If any of the things I said seemed disloyal, please try to forget them. Of course, I'm only too glad he wants me, and that I can help." "I understand," he assured her. "I never doubted that." The moon had set and it wanted only two hours of dawn when Conscience roused herself from her revery to say, "It's the next gate--on the right."