was signed by initials which Stuart inferred to be those of the
elderly aunt of whom she spoken. He laid his hand very gently on her arm
and turned her a step to the side so that she passed out of the broad
band of window-light and stood in the shadow. The blaze from the
interior gave too much the effect of a spotlight playing on her eyes and
lips and brow, for him to be willing that the idling crowds of strollers
should read what he read there. He knew that in a moment she would
regain control sufficiently to face even the fuller publicity inside,
but during that moment she had the right to the limited privacy afforded
by the dark shadow of the tiled veranda.

She stood leaning against the wall for a moment, then she straightened
herself with an effort and pressed the tips of her fingers to her
temples.

"What can you get out of your car?" she asked. And the man answered
quickly, "As much speed as the roads let me--I have done sixty."

"Please take me home." The words came abruptly and with undisguised
wretchedness, "and take me _fast_."

CHAPTER V

Twenty minutes later Stuart Farquaharson swung himself to the driver's
seat of his low-hung roadster, and threw on the switch, while Billy
Stirling and the others stood at the curb, waving farewells and finding
nothing suitable to say.

The car went purring through the quiet streets where gabled houses slept
under the moon, but having passed the town limits, leaped into a racing
pace along the road for Orleans.

Stuart made no effort to talk and Conscience spoke only at long
intervals. She was gazing ahead and her eyes were wide and wet with
tears.

Once she leaned over to say: "If any of the things I said seemed
disloyal, please try to forget them. Of course, I'm only too glad he
wants me, and that I can help."

"I understand," he assured her. "I never doubted that."

The moon had set and it wanted only two hours of dawn when Conscience
roused herself from her revery to say, "It's the next gate--on the
right."

Wheeling the car into the driveway, he had a shadowy impression of an
old and gabled place, inky except for the pallid light of a lamp turned
low in an upper window.

As the girl hesitated on the verandah, he caught the complaining creak
of an old plank, and while she waited for her bag there came to his ears
the whining scrape of a tree branch against the eaves. The little voices
of the hermitage were giving their mouselike welcome.

With