r. She ran off, more like Io, the
sylph, than ever, and Medenham stood there in a brown study.

"This sort of thing can't go on," he argued with himself. "At any
minute now I shall be taking her in my arms and kissing her, and that
will not be fair to Cynthia, who is proud and queenly, and who will
strive against the dictates of her own heart because it is not seemly
that she should wed her father's paid servant. So I must tell her,
to-day--perhaps during the run home from Hereford, perhaps to-night.
But, dash it all! that will break up our tour. One ought to consider
the world we live in; Cynthia will be one of its leaders, and it will
never do to have people saying that Viscount Medenham became engaged
to Cynthia Vanrenen while acting as the lady's chauffeur during a
thousand-mile run through the West of England and Wales. Now, what
_am_ I to do?"

The answer came from a bedroom window that overlooked the veranda.

"Mr. Fitzroy!"

He knew as he looked up that Cynthia dared not face him again, for her
voice was too exquisitely subtle in its modulations not to betray its
owner's disappointment before she uttered another word.

"I am very sorry," she said rapidly, "but I feel I ought not to leave
Mrs. Devar until she is better, so I mean to remain indoors all day. I
shall not require the car before nine o'clock to-morrow. If _you_ like
to visit Hereford, go at any time that suits your convenience."

She seemed to regret the curtness of her speech, though indeed she was
raging inwardly because of certain barbed shafts planted in her breast
by Mrs. Devar's faint protests, and tried to mitigate the blow she had
inflicted by adding, with a valiant smile:

"For this occasion only, Jupiter must content himself with Mercury as
a companion."

"If I had Jove's power----" he began wrathfully.

"If you were Cynthia Vanrenen, you would do exactly what she is
doing," she cried, and fled from the window.

It is not to be denied that he extracted some cold comfort from that
last cryptic remark. Cynthia wanted to come, but Mrs. Devar had
evidently burked the excursion. Why? Because Cynthia's escort would
be Viscount Medenham and not Arthur Simmonds, orthodox and highly
respectable chauffeur. But Mrs. Devar plainly declared herself on the
side of Viscount Medenham last night. Why, then, did she stop a short
journey by motor, with the laudable objective of hearing an anthem and
a sermon in a cathedral, when overnight she permi