un away now--my father
and mother are at the door."

There was an instant's respite while the carriage drew up to the veranda
steps. She heard the stable-boy running out to help with the horses.

"You can't go now; come in and wait."

There was no time for debate. She flung open the door and swept him past
her with a gesture--through the library and beyond, into a smaller room
used by Judge Claiborne as an office. Armitage sank down on a leather
couch as Shirley flung the portieres together with a sharp rattle of the
rod rings.

She walked toward the hall door as her father and mother entered from the
veranda.

"All, Miss Claiborne! Your father and mother picked me up and brought me
in out of the rain. Your Storm Valley is giving us a taste of its
powers."

And Shirley went forward to greet Baron von Marhof.

CHAPTER XVII

A GENTLEMAN IN HIDING

Oh, sweetly fall the April days!
My love was made of frost and light,
Of light to warm and frost to blight
The sweet, strange April of her ways.
Eyes like a dream of changing skies,
And every frown and blush I prize.
With cloud and flush the spring comes in,
With frown and blush maids' loves begin;
For love is rare like April days.

--L. Frank Tooker.

Mrs. Claiborne excused herself shortly, and Shirley, her father and the
Ambassador talked to the accompaniment of the shower that drove in great
sheets against the house. Shirley was wholly uncomfortable over the turn
of affairs. The Ambassador would not leave until the storm abated, and
meanwhile Armitage must remain where he was. If by any chance he should
be discovered in the house no ordinary excuses would explain away his
presence, and as she pondered the matter, it was Armitage's plight--his
injuries and the dangers that beset him--that was uppermost in her mind.
The embarrassment that lay in the affair for herself if Armitage should
be found concealed in the house troubled her little. Her heart beat
wildly as she realized this; and the look in his eyes and the quick pain
that twitched his face at the door haunted her.

The two men were talking of the new order of things in Vienna.

"The trouble is," said the Ambassador, "that Austria-Hungary is not a
nation, but what Metternich called Italy--a geographical expression.
Where there are so many loose ends a strong grasp is necessary to hold
them together."

"And a weak hand," suggested Judge Claiborne, "might easily lose or
scatter them."