ant stop he will not ask you to put
him up stop thought best to warn you as you might be planning
expedition. Trent."

"Hohenhauer!" exclaimed Mary, and now, oddly enough, she felt only
astonishment and annoyance. "Why should he come all this way to see
me? He could have written if he had anything to say." And then she
added passionately, "I won't have him here!"

"I thought perhaps you'd rather go down to Huntersville to see him,"
said Mr. Dinwiddie, looking out of the window. "Besides, he would make
thirteen at table. I can take you down in the morning and telephone
him to wait for us at the same time I order the motor to be sent up."

"I don't know that I'll see him at all."

"But you must realize that if you don't go down he'll come here. I
don't fancy he's the sort of man to take that long journey and be put
off with a rebuff. From what I know of him he not only would drive up
here, but, if you had gone off for the day, wait until you returned. I
don't see how you can avoid him."

"No, you are right. I shall have to see him--but what excuse can I
give Lee? He must never know the truth, and he'll want to go with us."

"I've thought of that. I'll tell him that Trent is sending up some
important papers for you to sign, and as some one is obliged to go to
Huntersville to check up the provisions that will arrive on the train
tomorrow morning, I've told Trent's clerk to wait there, as I prefer to
see to the other matter myself. I--I--hate deceiving Lee----"

"So do I, but it cannot be helped. Did he bring me up here to get me
away from Hohenhauer?"

Mr. Dinwiddie's complexion suddenly looked darker in the light of the
solitary candle. "Well--you see----"

"I suspected it for a moment and then forgot it. No doubt it is the
truth. So much the more reason why he should know nothing about that
man's following me. Why should he be made uneasy--perhaps unhappy?
But what excuse to go off without him?"

"They have a Ford down there. I'll tell them to send that. With the
provisions there'll be no room for four people."

"That will answer. And I'll give Hohenhauer a piece of my mind."

"But, Mary, you don't suppose that one of the most important men in
Europe, with limited time at his disposal, would take that journey
unless he had something very important indeed to say to you? Not even
for your _beaux yeux_, I should think, or he'd have asked Trent to get
him an invitation to spend several da