The meeting was not pleasant to any of the three. Charles was frankly indignant, Berry cool and reserved, Adrian in a tumult of embarrassment, envy, and resentment. “Rosalind is well, I dare say,” he said, in answer to their perfunctory question. “I’ve not seen her for several months. She’s studying to go on the stage--you’ll have her again for a rival, Berry, in your former sphere.” The covert insolence of this seemingly playful remark was not lost upon its hearers, who took no notice of it, however, and soon afterward managed to bring the interview to a close. Adrian departed, no richer than he had come. Before the end of the summer, he was killed in a railroad accident on the Continent, and Rosalind, the heiress whom he had reduced to poverty and driven to the stage, left the country, and was not again seen in England for many years. When she returned to trouble and harass her “relatives,” it was in an unexpected and disgraceful way. CHAPTER XLII. IN NEW GUISE. Years passed, fourteen happy and uneventful years, during most of which the Bonairs lived quietly on their English estate, among their friends in England and from America. Charles’ sisters, Lucile and Marie, with their families, spent alternate summers at Thetford Towers, or traveling on the Continent, while during the winters the Bonairs fled to California. One day, in early summer, Berry intended to drive over to Crumplesea, in her motor car, to say good-by to her old friends, the Westons, who were leaving the next morning. Willis Weston had married a charming American heiress years ago, and had become one of the leading dramatists and managers of America. Charles was absent from England, at this time, having gone to New York on business which would detain him there. It was a perfect summer day, warm and sunny, and Berry could not help feeling happy and secure from trouble or harm. But as in every life, clouds sometimes gather on the horizon and overshadow it for a while; so now, had she only known it, another storm was impending. The first sign thereof was a slight mishap which brought the motor car to a standstill halfway on the road to Crumplesea. Berry, who was somewhat of a fatalist in her way, always declared that the thing was foreordained. Mellish, chauffeur, simply said--sotto voce, of course--that it was “cursed bad luck, though no more than he had expected when Mrs. Bonair would have the car out to-day, after she’d been told that it ought to be sent to the garage yesterday, and she might just as well have used the victoria as not.”