to ferule yours," he gritted between his set teeth. "I'm as
much a man as you are a woman. You haven't any _sense_. And there's no
use of your dangling after Allan Gerard, for he don't want you--he said
as much. I'm going in, and I won't take you around the course."

Gasping, Isabel let him reach the French windows of the drawing-room
before recovering herself. Then she rushed in pursuit, tripping
impatiently over her long chiffon skirts.

"Corrie--wait! Corrie!"

He turned sullenly, secretly aghast at his own temerity. But Isabel laid
her hand on his sleeve without anger.

"You're more man than I thought," she breathed. "I always liked you
better than anyone else, anyhow. Corrie, if you'd take me around the
course, early in the morning when no one here knew, I believe you'd be
almost grown up enough to--to--be engaged."

"Isabel!" he cried, fire kindling in his face. "You would? You would?"

"If I get my ride----"

He seized her, boy-clumsily, and boy-like lavished his impetuous kisses.

"You'll get anything," he promised, half-choked by excitement. "And
everything. Oh, Isabel!"

Flavia's delicate music flowed on and on. Before Mr. Rose had finished
his discussion, Corrie and Isabel entered the room, and the evening
ended without any possibility of Gerard's resuming the theme commenced
in the fountain arcade.

When the group separated for the night, Corrie detained his sister at
the foot of the wide, gleaming stairs.

"Don't rise early in the morning to give me my coffee, Other Fellow," he
said. "I shan't be starting for the course at the usual time. I have
been working pretty steadily and I need to rest for the race itself, day
after to-morrow."

She leaned across the bannister to him; the two young faces framed in
young ripples of bright hair resembled each other very strongly in their
twin moods of exaltation and radiant, half-incredulous happiness.

"You do not feel unwell, dear? You have not driven too much?"

"Not a bit. But I'm sleepy," he caught a frond of a tall Madeiran fern
that was placed in its jardiniere on the step opposite him, winding the
satin-green strip over his finger, "honestly, all in with sleepiness,
and I'm going to sleep to-night as if it was the last quiet night's
sleep I'd ever get. See you to-morrow, kid sister."

"Good-night, dearest."

So, since she was not to give Corrie his morning coffee, she would not
give Gerard's to him or see him until his return from the race co