ustache in dismay, for it was hard to keep up a
pretense when Cynthia was so near. She ended the sentence for him.

"You came to the Bath Hotel. Why not stay there to-night?"

"I would like it very much, if you have no objection."

"Just the opposite. But--please forgive me for touching on money
matters--the charges may be rather dear. Won't you let me tell the
head waiter to--to include your bill with ours?"

"On the strict condition that you deduct twelve shillings from my
account," he said, stealing a glance at her.

"I shall be quite business-like, I promise."

She was smiling at the landscape, or at some fancy that took her,
perhaps. But it followed that a messenger was sent for Dale to the
hostelry where he had booked a room for his master, and that Mrs.
Devar, after one stony and indignant glare, whispered to Cynthia in
the dining-room:

"Can that man in evening dress, sitting alone near the window, by any
possibility be our chauffeur?"

"Yes," laughed the girl. "That is Fitzroy. Say, doesn't he look fine
and dandy? Don't you wish he was with us--to order the wine? And, by
the way, is there a pier at Bournemouth?"

CHAPTER IV

SHADOWS--WITH OCCASIONAL GLEAMS

Mrs. Devar ate her soup in petrified silence. Among the diners were at
least two peers and a countess, all of whom she knew slightly; at no
other time during the last twenty years would she have missed such an
opportunity of impressing the company in general and her companion in
particular by waddling from table to table and greeting these
acquaintances with shrill volubility.

But to-night she was beginning to be alarmed. Her youthful protegee
was carrying democratic training too far; it was quite possible that a
request to modify an unconventional freedom of manner where Fitzroy
was concerned would meet with a blank refusal. That threatened a real
difficulty in the near future, and she was much perturbed by being
called on to decide instantly on a definite course of action. Too
strong a line might have worse consequences than a _laissez faire_
attitude. As matters stood, the girl was eminently plastic, her
naturally gentle disposition inducing respect for the opinions and
wishes of an older and more experienced woman, yet there was a
fearlessness, a frank candor of thought, in Cynthia's character that
awed and perplexed Mrs. Devar, in whom the unending struggle to keep
afloat in the swift and relentless torrent of social existence ha