ll warn him that you are irresistible."

"Good-by again," said Cynthia severely. "You can tell me all about it
after--oh, some time to-day, anyhow."

The Green Dragon proved to be most undragonish. No manner of doubt was
cast on Medenham's good faith; he pocketed half a dozen letters for
Cynthia, and one, unstamped, bearing the crest of the Mitre, for Mrs.
Devar. By the merest chance he caught sight of a note, addressed
"Viscount Medenham," stuck in a rack among some telegrams. The
handwriting was his father's. But how secure it without arousing quite
reasonable suspicion? He tried the bold course.

"I may as well take that, too," he said offhandedly.

"Is Viscount Medenham also in your party?" inquired the bookkeeper.

"Yes."

Again no demur was raised, since the Earl's repeated demands for
information as to Miss Vanrenen's whereabouts showed that some sort of
link must exist between him and the missing tourists.

Medenham sat in his car outside and read:

MY DEAR GEORGE--If this reaches you, please oblige me by
returning to town at once. Your aunt is making a devil of a
fuss, and is most unpleasant. I say no more now, since I am
not sure that you will be in Hereford before we meet.

Yours ever,
F.

"I can see myself being very angry with Aunt Susan," he growled in the
first flush of resentment against the unfairness of her attitude.

But that phase soon passed. His mind dwelt rather on Lady St. Maur's
bland amazement when she encountered Cynthia. He could estimate with
some degree of precision her ladyship's views regarding the eighty
millions of citizens of the United States; had she not said in his
hearing that "American society was evidently quite English--but with
the head cut off?"

That, and a sarcastic computation as to the difference between Ten
Thousand and Four Hundred, constituted her knowledge of America.
Still, he made excuses for her. It was no new thing for an aristocracy
to be narrow-minded. Horace, that fine gentleman, "hated the vulgar
crowd," and Nicolo Machiavelli, fifteen centuries later, denounced the
nobles of Florence for their "easy-going contempt of everything and
everybody"; so Lady St. Maur had plenty of historical precedent for
the coining of cheap epigrams.

The one person Medenham was really bitter against was Millicent
Porthcawl. _She_ had met Cynthia; _she_ herself must have frowned
at the lying innuendoe