While Marjorie and Leila rode on through fragrant spring bloom to Orchard Inn, Leslie Cairns drove slowly toward the town of Hamilton. She was filled with many emotions, but the chief one was that of surprise at the way in which she had been received by “Bean” and Leila Harper. She had always stood a trifle in awe of Leila and her cleverness when the two had been classmates though she had affected to despise the gifted Irish girl. Marjorie she had hated from the first meeting. Or thus she had narrowly believed until she had come into the knowledge that “little friend ruffles” and Marjorie were one and the same. She had also come into a knowledge of Marjorie which she could not ever again overlook.

A friendly act on Marjorie’s part, the prompting of a broad tolerant spirit had been the magic which had worked a well-nigh unbelievable change in Leslie. It is often the small, seemingly unimportant happenings in life which frequently are instrumental in working the most amazing transformations.

While Marjorie was going through one process of growing up Leslie was going through another widely different phase of the same process. Leslie had begun to learn that: “He who breaks, pays.” Until her garage failure she had been childishly stubborn in her belief that she could successfully “get away with” whatever she undertook to accomplish. She had suffered untold mortification of spirit over the ignominious end her father had put to her business venture. She had read and re-read the letter which her father had at that time written her until she knew every scathing word of it by heart. This in itself had produced a beneficial effect upon Leslie’s wayward character. In time to come she would regard that particular letter as the turning point in her life.

The downfall of her business hopes had furnished her with gloomy retrospection for long days after she had returned to New York. With all the fancied grudges she had against Marjorie she was obliged to admit to herself that “Bean” had certainly not been responsible for her father’s unexpected visit to Hamilton. Neither was she to know until years afterward that a “Bean-inspired” advocate of justice in the person of Signor Guiseppe Baretti had proven her business Waterloo.

Sullenly obeying her father’s stern command to renew her intimacy with Natalie Weyman, Leslie had reluctantly got into touch again with Natalie. Natalie, however, was betrothed to a young English baronet. She was consequently interested in nothing but herself, her fiancÉ and an elaborate trousseau of which she was imperiously directing the preparation.

Leslie felt utterly “out of it” at Nat’s playhouse. She lounged in and out of the Weyman’s imposing Long Island palace with the enthusiasm of a wooden Indian. She listened in morose silence to Natalie’s fulsome eulogies upon her fiancÉ, Lord Kenneth Hawtrey, the Hawtrey ancestral tree, her own trousseau and the two-million dollar settlement her father proposed to make over to her as a bridal gift. Leslie mentally tabulated each of these fond topics upon her bored brain and learned to know by the signs just when each of them would be complacently brought forward by her former college chum.

When she could stand the strain no longer she had announced to Mrs. Gaylord that her father had gone to Europe and that she intended to buy a new roadster and drive to Hamilton. “You can stay here or go along, Gaylord. Suit yourself. My advice to you is to stick to me. Peter the Great will approve of such devotion on your part. He knows I’d go, even if you were to try to squash the expedition. Your part is ‘Never desert Leslie,’” was the succinct counsel she gave her chaperon.

While Leslie was engaged in driving slowly toward Hamilton wrapped in her own half sad, half relieved mixture of thoughts, a tall man in a leather motor coat and cap ran down the steps of the Hamilton House and sprang into a rakish-looking racing car parked in front of the hotel. His heavy dark brows were corrugated in a frown. His lips though firmly set harbored a grim smile.

He had driven through the sunny streets of sedate Hamilton that afternoon as one who knew the place but had been long away from it. This was his second call at the hotel. On both occasions he had seen and talked with Mrs. Gaylord. His business, beyond a few, dry unreproving sentences, was with Leslie Cairns. As Leslie confidently believed him to be in Europe she was scheduled to receive a decided shock.

Peter Cairns, for the man in the racer was he, was soon speeding over Hamilton Pike, through Hamilton estates and on past the college wall toward a squat stone building which had the appearance of an old-time inn. In front of it he parked the racer again and strode up the long stone walk toward the quaint low door with its swinging wrought iron lamp.

Within the restaurant Signor Guiseppe Baretti was in earnest consultation with his manager. He glanced up at the newcomer, who, instead of choosing a table and making for it, headed directly for him. That the little, shrewd-eyed proprietor of the restaurant and the broad-shouldered financier had a bond in common was plainly evident from the way in which they shook hands at the close of the financier’s short call.

“What you think? What you think?” the Italian excitedly demanded, catching his manager’s arm as the door closed behind his caller. “This is the father the girl we write the letter about. When he comes here, just now, a little while, he says to me: ‘How’r you? You don’t know me. I am Peter Car-rins.’ I think this mebbe where I get the hard beat, cause I have tol’ this man what trouble his daughter make Miss Page, Miss Dean. But this is what say: ‘I am to thank you for your letter. I have not the time today talk much with you. Before long I come here again. Then I tell you som’thin’ su’prise you verra much.’

“I say then to him I think he come to give me the good beat for my letter. He laugh. He say: ‘No, no.’ Put up his hand like that.” Baretti illustrated. “‘I un’erstand you verra well. I have been much in Italy. I know the Italiano.’ Then he speak me good Italiano. Now that is the father Miss Car-rins. What you think? She is here in Hamilton again. Mebbe her father don’ know it. I believ’ he don’. Mebbe she don’ know he is here. When both find out, then oo-oo, much fuss I guess. Mebbe Miss Car-rins get a good beat,” he predicted with a hard-hearted chuckle.

If he had walked to the door after Peter Cairns instead of lingering to acquaint his faithful little countryman with the identity of the stranger, he would have seen something interesting. He would have seen a trim-lined black roadster slow down to a sudden stop as the result of a peremptory hail from a racing car which had drawn up alongside. In short, Baretti would have seen Leslie Cairns and Peter Cairns meet precisely in front of the east-end gates of the campus.