he last resource she would face him with
dauntless courage.

"I assure you I would not have had this thing happen on any account,"
he said in a voice that vibrated with sympathy. "Indeed, I pray your
pity in my own behalf, Miss Vanrenen. After all, it is I who suffer
the agony of failure when I meant only to please. You will reach
Bristol this evening, a little late, perhaps, but quite safely, and I
hope that you will laugh then at the predicament which now looks so
ill-starred."

His seeming sincerity appeased her to some extent. In rapid swing back
to the commonplace, she affected to laugh.

"It is not so serious, after all," she said, with more calmness than
she felt. "Just for a moment you threw me off the rails by your
lawyer-like vagueness."

Drawing a little apart, she looked steadily back along the deserted
road.

"I see nothing of my car," she murmured at last. "It will soon be
dusk. We must take no more chances. Please send for that benzine right
away."

Smith was dispatched forthwith on what he knew to be a fool's errand,
since both he and Marigny were practically sure of their ground. The
nearest petrol was to be found at Langford, two miles along the
Bristol road from the fork, and four miles in the opposite direction
to that taken by Smith, who, when he returned empty-handed an hour
later, must make another long journey to Langford. The Du Vallon was
now anchored immovably until eleven o'clock, and it was well that the
girl could not realize the true nature of the ordeal before her, or
events might have taken an awkward twist.

The Frenchman meant no real harm by his rascally scheme, for Cynthia
Vanrenen, daughter of a well-known American citizen, was not to be
wooed and won in the fashion that commended itself to unscrupulous
lovers in by-gone days. Yet his design blended subtlety and daring in
a way that was worthy of ancestors who had ruffled it at Versailles
with the cavaliers of old France. He trusted implicitly to the effect
of a somewhat exciting adventure on the susceptible feminine heart.
The phantom of distrust would soon vanish. She would yield to the
spell of a night scented with the breath of summer, languorous with
soft zephyrs, a night when the spirit of romance itself would
emparadise the lonely waste, and a belated moon, "like to a silver bow
new-bent in heaven," would lend its glamor to a sky already spangled
with glowing sapphires.

In such a night, all things were possible.