r had left the property to a boy
cousin--Leslie!"

"Well, didn't he?"

"Yes, and no! There is no boy cousin. This is Leslie--only she's called
Carmel--the heiress of Cheverley Chase!"

"You!" exclaimed Everard again, gazing at Carmel.

"Don't call me 'the heiress,' Dulcie," protested Carmel. "You know I've
said from the very first that I don't intend to take the Chase away from
you all. It's yours every bit as much as mine, and more so, because my
own real home is in Sicily, and I hope to go back there some day.
Everard, will you make friends with me on that understanding, and shake
hands? I don't want to turn anybody out of the Chase."

Carmel held out a slim little hand, and Everard accepted it delicately,
as if it had been that of a princess.

"I'm still stunned," he remarked. "To think I should have been driving
you all this time, and not have known you were Leslie Ingleton! I never
chanced to hear your surname. I thought you were Mrs. Rogers' niece."

"And so I am!" laughed Carmel. "At least she's my step-aunt, at any
rate. Isn't it a regular _Comedy of Errors_?"

"Everard," put in Lilias, "why did you turn chauffeur? We thought you
had run away to sea!"

"I meant to," answered her brother bitterly, "but when it came to the
point of getting employment, I found the only thing I could earn a
living at was driving a car. I don't know that I even do that very
decently, but at any rate I'm self-supporting. You'd better leave me
where I am! It's all I'm good for!"

"Not a bit of it!" answered Carmel. "I've arranged the whole thing in my
mind already. We'll make an exchange. Milner shall take charge of the
car for the Rogers until they can find another chauffeur, and you shall
drive Cousin Clare and Lilias and Dulcie and me back to the Chase. Now
don't begin to talk, for it's quite settled, and for once in my life I
declare I mean to have my own way!"

CHAPTER XI

A Secret Society

Carmel seldom asserted herself, but if she set her heart on an object
she generally managed to persuade people to her way of thinking. This
case proved no exception, and she contrived with little difficulty to
transfer the amazed but willing Milner temporarily into the service of
Major Rogers, and to instal Everard, minus his chauffeur's uniform, and
looking once more an Ingleton, to drive the Daimler car back to
Cheverley Chase. Perhaps the talk which Major Rogers had with his
one-time "Johnson" partly worked the mirac