rt.

"Corrie doesn't mind taking me, do you, dear?" she covered her brother's
chagrin.

"I surely don't, Other Fellow," he heartily corroborated, coming across
to his sister, although the change in his transparent face betrayed his
discomfiture at the slight. "You and I have had many a good spin. In you
go! Come up behind, Rupert; there is more room here than on the other
machine."

"I think Mr. Rupert would rather ride with us, anyhow," Flavia declared,
her laughing eyes questioning the mechanician. "I fancied, once or twice
on the way over, that he would have preferred to have you or Mr. Gerard
driving."

"I ain't making any scornful denials," admitted Rupert, as he stepped in
front to crank the motor for Corrie. "I've always looked forward to
being killed in a larger machine, myself."

Isabel did not at once enter her own car.

"I can't fasten this glove without taking off the other, and then I
can't fasten the other without taking off this," she complained. "I
really believe----"

So, the last the three in the departing roadster saw of the two on the
pier, Allan Gerard was engaged in buttoning Isabel's glove, while her
wind-blown veils fluttered across his shoulders and her flushed,
provocative face bent over the task beside his.

IV

ISABEL

Isabel, in the clinging knitted coat that displayed every attractive
line of her athletic figure, her cheeks reddened by triumph and the salt
wind, her gray eyes lifted in challenging coquetry, was a sufficiently
pleasant sight to dispel mere vexation. And Gerard had no right to feel
more than annoyance at a disappointment of which she supposedly knew
nothing.

"I ran away with you because I didn't want to ride home with Corrie,"
she confided, when the last button-hole was achieved. "You don't
mind--much?"

"I am overwhelmed by the honor," Gerard assured. He was neither surly
enough to refuse the light play to which she invited him, nor anchorite
enough to be insensible to the flattery of being sought. "But how did
Prince Corrie offend his sovereign lady?"

"Oh, that would be telling! You know, we are _not_ engaged."

"Not yet?"

"Not at all. And the last time we were out alone together, he--he asked
me to see if the oil was running through that little cup on the dash."

"And then?"

They were in the car now, Gerard behind the steering-wheel. Isabel
leaned down to touch her fingers to the dash, turning her vivid-hued,
consciously alluring face a