t Grinden Hall was their objective and
must be found. Then he climbed in with her, and they rode in a dark
broken with the fitful lightnings of street-lamps and motors.

The taxi glided out M Street. The little shops of Georgetown went
sidelong by. The cab turned abruptly to the left and clattered across
the old aqueduct bridge. On a broad reach of the Potomac the new-risen
moon spread a vast sheet of tin-foil of a crinkled sheen. This was all
that was beautiful about the sordid neighborhood, but it was very
beautiful, and tender to a strange degree.

Once across, the driver stopped and leaned round to call in at the
door:

"This is Rosslyn. Where do yew-all want to go next?"

"Grinden Hall. Ask somebody."

"Ask who? They ain't a soul tew be saw."

They waited in the dark awhile; then Davidge got out and, seeing a
street-car coming down through the hills like a dragon in fiery
scales, he stopped it to ask the motorman of Grinden Hall. He knew
nothing, but a sleepy passenger said that he reckoned that that
was the fancy name of Mr. Sawtell's place, and he shouted the
directions:

"Yew go raht along this road ovah the caw tracks, and unda a bridge
and keep a-goin' up a ridge and ova till yew come to a shawp tu'n to
the raht. Big whaht mansion, ain't it?"

"I don't know," said Davidge. "I never saw it."

"Well, I reckon that's the place. Only 'Hall' I knaow about up heah."

The motorman kicked his bell and started off.

"Nothing like trying," said Davidge, and clambered in. The taxicab
went veering and yawing over an unusually Virginian bad road. After a
little they entered a forest. The driver threw on his search-light,
and it tore from the darkness pictures of forest eerily green in the
glare--old trees slanting out, deep channels blackening into
mysterious glades. The car swung sharply to the right and growled up a
hill, curving and swirling and threatening to capsize at every moment.
The sense of being lost was irresistible.

Marie Louise fell to pondering; suddenly she grew afraid to find
Grinden Hall. She knew that Polly knew Lady Clifton-Wyatt. They might
have met since Polly wrote that letter. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had
perhaps--had doubtless--told Polly all about Marie Louise. Polly would
probably refuse her shelter. She knew Polly: there was no middle
ground between her likes and dislikes; she doted or she hated. She was
capable of smothering her friends with affection and of making them
ancient enemi