the reply to carry
it through unchallenged.

Cynthia's brows puckered in a reflective frown.

"That is odd," she murmured.

"What is odd?" asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the
periodical to hide a smile of embarrassment.

"Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this
country. They call towns after men and men after towns."

She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who
was married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but
checked the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did
not seem to wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but
she did not gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject
on that occasion.

Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many
miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia's thoughts brooded again on poets
and lonely graves, and the danger passed.

Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter
she wrote from Symon's Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its
hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion
of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both
agreed that the comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was
rapidly losing its significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs.
Leland's advent had thrust her into the background, for the American
widow was rich, good-looking, and cultured, and the flow of small talk
between the newcomer and Cynthia left her as hopelessly out of range
as used to be the case when that domineering Medenham would lean back
in the car and say things beyond her comprehension, or murmur them to
Cynthia if she happened to be sitting by his side.

Luncheon had ended, but the clouds which had been gathering over the
lake country during the morning suddenly poured a deluge over a
thirsty land. Thirlmere and Ullswater and the rest of the glories of
Westmoreland that lay beyond the pass of Dunmail Raise were swallowed
up in a fog of rain. Simmonds, questioned by the millionaire, admitted
that a weather-beaten native had prophesied "a week of it," more or
less.

Four Britons might have sat down and played Bridge stolidly, but three
of this quartette were Americans, and within two hours of the change
in the elements, they were seated in the London-bound train at
Windermere Station.

Not one of them was really displeased because of this rapid alteration
in their