look of
appeal.

"Well, at all events, Tibe is safe," I said, "and we ought to start, if
we're to get through our program to-day. Ladies, is your luggage ready?
I'll see that Tibe has a nice bone instead of breakfast. He can eat it
in the car, going to the boat; and as it's dusty, you had better put on
your motor-veils when you leave the hotel. Starr and I are going to wear
goggles."

"Alb," said Starr, as the ladies moved away, "you may have a bad heart,
but you have a good head. Disguise and flight are our only hope. If Sir
Alec should recognize me----"

("If he should recognize me," I echoed inwardly.)

"The game would be up."

"Speed, veils, and goggles may do the trick," said I.

"But afterwards? By Jove, what we're let in for!"

"We must set our wits to work. Change 'Lorelei's' name and disappear
into space."

Five minutes later we were off, unrecognizable by our best friends, and
Tibe well hidden, deeply interested in his bone at the bottom of the
_tonneau_. But hardly were we away when Miss Rivers cried out----

"Oh, look, Nell; there's Sir Alec MacNairne. Oughtn't we to stop a
minute, so that Lady MacNairne----"

"I'm afraid we haven't time," I said hastily, and put on speed, as much
as I dared in traffic. We whizzed by a cab, and might have passed the
gloomy-faced man who sat in it with his traveling-bag (hastily packed,
I'll warrant) had not the two girls bowed.

Their faces were not to be recognized behind the small, triangular tale
windows of the silk and lace motor-veils they bought in Haarlem; but
their bow attracted Sir Alec MacNairne's attention, and those
"quick-tempered blue eyes" of his looked the whole party over as he
lifted his hat from his crisply curling auburn hair. He probably divined
that the two veiled figures must be the girls of his late adventure; and
as he was now acquainted with them and with Tibe, there would be one
less chance of our boat slipping away from under his nose, in case he
got upon our track.

I realized that Sir Alec could not have been in Scotland when the fatal
paragraph appeared, which reached our eyes only yesterday. If he had
been, he could not have arrived in Amsterdam to-day. My idea now is that
he must have come abroad in search of his wife, have seen the Paris
_Herald_ at some Continental resort, and have rushed off post-haste to
Holland, expecting to find her.

Exactly why he should have chosen Amsterdam to begin his quest, is not
so clear; but