e the gentlemen who wished to see Mr. Coburn, I presume?" she
said before Merriman could speak. "He is at the works. You will find him
in his office."

Merriman stepped forward, his cap off.

"Don't you remember me, Miss Coburn?" he said earnestly. "I had the
pleasure of meeting you in May, when you were so kind as to give me
petrol to get me to Bordeaux."

Miss Coburn looked at him more carefully, and her manner, which had up
to then been polite, but coolly self-contained, suddenly changed. Her
face grew dead white and she put her hand sharply to her side, as though
to check the rapid beating of her heart. For a moment she seemed unable
to speak, then, recovering herself with a visible effort, she answered
in a voice that trembled in spite of herself:

"Mr. Merriman, isn't it? Of course I remember. Won't you come in? My
father will be back directly."

She was rapidly regaining self-control, and by the time Merriman had
presented Hilliard her manner had become almost normal. She led the way
to a comfortably furnished sitting-room looking out over the river.

"Hilliard and I are on a motor launch tour across France," Merriman went
on. "He worked from England down the coast to Bordeaux, where I joined
him, and we hope eventually to cross the country to the Mediterranean
and do the Riviera from the sea."

"How perfectly delightful," Miss Coburn replied. "I envy you."

"Yes, it's very jolly doing these rivers and canals," Hilliard
interposed. "I have spent two or three holidays that way now, and it has
always been worth while."

As they chatted on in the pleasant room the girl seemed completely to
have recovered her composure, and yet Merriman could not but realize a
constraint in her manner, and a look of anxiety in her clear brown eyes.
That something was disturbing her there could be no doubt, and that
something appeared to be not unconnected with himself. But, he reasoned,
there was nothing connected with himself that could cause her anxiety,
unless it really was that matter of the number plates. He became
conscious of an almost overwhelming desire to share her trouble whatever
it might be, to let her understand that so far from willingly causing a
shadow to fall across her path there were few things he would not do to
give her pleasure; indeed, he began to long to take her in his arms, to
comfort her....

Presently a step in the hall announced Mr. Coburn's return. "In here,
daddy," his daughter called, and