"Why, I hadn't any idea you were here. Nobody told me." "Miss Lethmere is always elusive," Teddy laughed, bowing to her. "Have you been up on your own bus, or on Eastwell's?" "On Mr Eastwell's. My engine did not run well, so Barnes, his mechanic, lent me his machine," was her reply. Then, turning to me, she said: "I went up only five minutes after you. I wonder you didn't look back when you banked over the railway line at Wheathampstead. I was just behind you then, though I could not overtake you, as my engine seemed a little sluggish." "That doesn't occur very often in Eastwell's bus," remarked Teddy. "I flew it last Thursday, and found the 150 Gnome ran perfectly." "Well, Claude, you outdistanced me altogether," declared my well-beloved. "From Hertford, with the wind behind you, you absolutely shot back. I thought that Mr Eastwell's machine would outmatch yours, but, though I put every ounce into the engine, I was hopelessly out of it. It hadn't been tuned up well." "That's curious, Roseye," I replied. "I had no idea that my bus was any match for his! I thought that his Mertonville machine was much faster than mine--or than yours as a matter of fact." "To-day mine is out of the running," she laughed. To you, my reader, I suppose I ought to describe my own beloved Roseye. Well, I am not good at describing women. As the only son of a blunt, white-haired physician who having made expert study of all the thousand-and-one ailments of the eternal feminine, including that affection called "nerves"--mostly the result of the drug habit, I had heard, from my youth upwards, many disparaging remarks upon the follies and the unbalance of the mind of the gentler sex. This, however, did not prevent me from loving Roseye Lethmere, daughter of Sir Herbert, who had come into my life quite unexpectedly a year ago. As she stood there chatting with us, attired in her airwoman's clothes, her appearance was certainly workwomanlike. She was dressed in a wool-lined leather coat, and overall trousers, with a knitted Balaclava helmet, and over that again a leather skull-cap, the whole tied down tightly beneath the chin. A huge khaki woollen muffler was around her throat, while a pair of unsightly goggles hanging around her neck completed the picture. She had followed my advice, I noted, and tied her muffler very securely around her chin. How very different she looked at that moment to when I took her--as I so frequently did--to a play, and afterwards to supper at the Carlton, the Savoy, or Ciro's. She was a girl who, on the outbreak of war, had decided to play her part in the national crisis, and she certainly had done so. Three times had she flown across the Channel with me, and three times had we returned in safety to Hendon.