vely girl,
troubled to the heart's core, with her beseeching eyes and trembling
lips touched her poignantly, meltingly.

"Oh, Joan, I don't like it!" she whispered. "What mad thing have you
done?"

"Nothing that can't be put right! Nothing! Nothing!" Joan caught eagerly
at the argument. "Oh, I was a fool! But if you'll only help me
to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged."

The words were bold enough, but the girl's voice trailed off into a low,
unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must
now carry through caught at her heart. "Oh, Miranda, do be kind!"

"When do you want the car?" asked Miranda.

"Immediately after we get to Harrel."

"Joan!"

Miranda herself was growing frightened. She stood torn with indecision.
Joan's distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery
upon the other. For the first time in her life Joan was in some
desperate crisis of destiny. Her feet and hands twitched as though she
were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break. What wisdom
of experience could she bring to help her to escape? On what wild and
hopeless venture might she not be set?

"Yes, yes," Joan urged eagerly. "I have thought it all out. I want you
to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has
set you down. There's a road on the right a few yards down. If he will
turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will
join him immediately."

"But it will be noticed that you have gone. People will ask for you,"
Miranda objected.

"No, I shall be back again within the hour. There will be a crowd of
people. And lots won't imagine that I should ever come to the dance at
all." Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips. "And if
the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn't have gone, should I? I should
still be wearing sandals," she explained, as she looked down at the
buckles of her trim satin slippers, "and haughtily wishing you all good
night in the hall here. No, it will be easy enough. I shall just shake
hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the
ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park."

"It's dangerous, Joan!" said Miranda.

"Oh, I know, but----" Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door.
"The others are coming. Miranda, will you help me? I would have driven
over to Harrel in my own little car. But it's open and I should have got
blown about