nent, and she had rebuked him and
sent him away, cutting him out of her life altogether. Perhaps she ought
to have remembered that she had mildly flirted with Diana's cousin and
given him opportunity for the impassioned speeches she resented; but
Louise had a girlish idea that there was no harm in flirting,
considering it a feminine license. She saw young Mershone at the Kermess
that evening paying indifferent attentions to other women and ignoring
her, and was sincerely glad to have done with him for good and all.

She obeyed readily the man who asked her to be seated in the limousine.
Arthur would be with her in a minute, he said. When the door closed and
the car started she had an impulse to cry out but next moment controlled
it and imagined they were to pick up Mr. Weldon on some corner.

On and on they rolled, and still no evidence of the owner of the
limousine. What could it mean, Louise began to wonder. Had something
happened to Arthur, so that he had been forced to send her home alone?
As the disquieting thought came she tried to speak with the chauffeur,
but could not find the tube. The car was whirling along rapidly; the
night seemed very dark, only a few lights twinkled here and there
outside.

Suddenly the speed slackened. There was a momentary pause, and then the
machine slowly rolled upon a wooden platform. A bell clanged, there was
a whistle and the sound of revolving water-wheels. Louise decided they
must be upon a ferry-boat, and became alarmed for the first time.

The man in livery now opened the door, as if to reassure her.

"Where are we? Where is Mr. Weldon?" enquired the girl, almost
hysterically.

"He is on the boat, miss, and will be with you shortly now," replied the
man, very respectfully. "Mr. Weldon is very sorry to have annoyed you,
Miss Merrick, but says he will soon explain everything, so that you will
understand why he left you."

With this he quietly closed the door again, although Louise was eager to
ask a dozen more questions. Prominent was the query why they should be
on a ferry-boat instead of going directly home. She knew the hour must
be late.

But while these questions were revolving in her mind she still suspected
no plot against her liberty. She must perforce wait for Arthur to
explain his queer conduct; so she sat quietly enough in her place
awaiting his coming, while the ferry puffed steadily across the river to
the Jersey shore.

The stopping of the boat aroused Lo