Love leading, Carleigh followed. On his way to the railway station he wired to the Honorable Julian Archdeacon, Carfen House:

Can you put me up for a few days? Longing to see you and Cecile. Wire answer Junior Carlton Club.

When he got up to town the bid was there waiting for him. So he went down the next morning by a ridiculously—a suspiciously—early train.

The Archdeacons were not deceived in the least by the flattering wording of the telegram. They were strongly inclined to believe that something was up; and when their so suddenly demonstrative guest arrived before luncheon they were quite convinced.

Their first theory, however, which had to do with a certain presence at Cross Saddle Hall, the seat of the Dalgries, their nearest neighbors, was altogether wrong; as they very promptly discovered.

For before Sir Caryll had been in the house an hour Cecile came unexpectedly upon him and Nina Darling, with heads close together, ensconced in a secluded corner of the orangery.

Carleigh, blushing like a school-girl, had sprung up with a start.

"Fancy Mrs. Darling being here!" he cried, in a tone by no means free from embarrassment. "We were at Bellingdown, you know, for the week-end. But I'd no notion she was coming to you. It was a surprise."

The poor boy was wofully transparent. It was all Cecile Archdeacon could do to keep her face straight; especially when behind his back Nina deliberately winked at her.

Of course she lost no time in telling Julian. It was far too good to keep.

"By gad!" he cried, laughing. "Nina's never out of character, is she? Think of her catching poor Carleigh on the rebound! No man's immune from her. Even I—"

"Don't flatter yourself," his wife cut in. "You're far too pursy. Nina likes them with a waist."

"Really!" he exclaimed, swallowing his bruised conceit. "I didn't know. I've never noticed her preferences. At that I think you're wrong, Cis. It's just the chap that happens to be 'round."

"It's just the chap that happens not to be round," returned his wife. But Julian, as good, kindly and stupid as he was corpulent, never saw it in the least.

Meanwhile, Nina and Caryll were battling over old scores in the orangery.

"So you want me to go away?" said she.

"No. I want you to come away—with me," said he.

"I told you if you followed me here I'd leave."

"But you didn't mean it. I know you didn't mean it. It was just to test me."

"It was nothing of the sort. I was never more in earnest. I begged Lord Kneedrock to chain you if necessary. Did he say anything to you?"

"Oh, yes, of course. He did have quite a talk with me. Wanted to take me to his shooting-box and all that sort of thing. But I didn't fancy he meant to put me in irons. He was really very kind."

"Nibbetts kind?" queried Nina, plucking an orange leaf and doubling it in her long white fingers. "Then he must have contemplated extreme measures. What was it he said?"

"He said that perhaps you were getting too fond of me. Are you?"

"He didn't. I don't believe you. I can't hear him saying anything like that. Not at all."

"He said it," Carleigh insisted. "I'm wondering if it isn't true. You're afraid I'll carry you off by storm."

"I'm afraid you're very silly," she said, dropping the leaf and yawning without any disguise. "And I do hate to be bored."

"He said I bored you. Did you tell him that?"

"I forget. I may have. It's not unlikely."

"I'm sorry. You never gave any sign until just now. I thought you liked me no end. A woman doesn't let a man—"

She knew what was coming, and he got no farther.

"You'll bore me very much if you go into that. I'm different, you know. I thought I made that plain. I'm not at all like other women—prudish and all that. If a man can get any comfort out of holding my hand I'm not selfish enough to deny him. And you did so need comfort. It isn't at all kind of you to make more of it."

He leaned closer to her. His eyes were very big and there was an undeniable flush on his young, fair cheeks.

"But—you let me kiss you," he said, "and—and you—you—"

"You're trying to say I kissed you back, I suppose. Well, what of it?"

"Doesn't that count? Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Of course it means something. It means that I sympathized. You had been suddenly deprived of the kisses of your fiancÉe, and I felt how you must miss them. My kisses were purely vicarious. You were starving, and in her place—purely in her place—I fed you."

"And after two days you throw me adrift to starve some more." His tone was very plaintive.

"I can't go on indefinitely, don't you know," returned Nina. "I don't see how you can ask it. Besides it's fully time you went back to her and made it all up. After you've made it up you'll be sorry you ever saw me. My kisses will be on your conscience. You'll feel like telling her, and you won't dare. So—"

"But I shall never make it up. I've said that a dozen times. It's all over and done with forever."

"Then go to her mother. Isn't she kissable?"

"I hate her mother," he groaned.

"How about her father?"

Carleigh drew up his mouth, winked once with both eyes, and stared.

"Are you suggesting that her father might kiss me?" he asked, at length, in highest indignation.

"Oh, dear, no," answered Nina, laughing. "Did it sound like that? I was thinking faster than I talked. I was wondering about her father—her real, own father, I mean. Not the diamond man—not Veynol."

But still he looked at her, a question showing through his eyes.

"Is—is he still alive?"

"You've been reading British Society," he charged.

"Was there something in that about him? I swear I haven't seen the nasty rag in years."

"I saw it," he said. "It purported to give the real reason for the breaking off of my engagement. But it wasn't true. What it said I'd never so much as heard."

"What did it say?"

"It slandered Rosamond's father. And I'll not add to the slander by repeating it."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nina. "Then you don't hate the whole family."

But Carleigh made no reply. He shrugged his shoulders and, leaning forward, gazed moodily for a moment at a depending golden globe a half-dozen yards away.

So posed, he was a wistful, pathetic figure, and Nina's heart softened. "I won't go away," she said; and he looked at her, again pleased.

"You mean—"

"I mean I'll be nice to you for just one week more. If—"

"If—I don't care what the 'if' is, if you'll keep your word."

"If you'll promise to go back to the Veynol girl when the week's over."

"But there's no use," he insisted. "We had very bitter words. She would never consent to see me again. I know she wouldn't."

"I'm not saying she would," Nina argued. "Girls can be very stubborn. I'm a little like that myself. Still, you can try, you know. It's that I'm asking. Will you promise?"

He looked unutterable things at her—passion, love, adoration. "I'd promise to kill myself at the end for a week of your kindness. You can be so divinely adorable, when—you like."

"I don't want you to kill yourself. I want you to have life at his fullest—all that's brightest, and best, and most worthy. I want you to have the happiness to which you're destined."

"I'll have bliss for a week, at all events," he declared, edging closer and reaching for the hand nearest him.

"But bliss is so fleeting," she said. "You must have the joy that lasts." She drew her hand away. "Remember, I shall let you make love to me only on that condition."

He didn't in the least understand, and he told her so.

"Why are you so insistent?" he asked.

"Because I'll only do this wicked thing that good may come of it."

"Wicked thing," he repeated.

"It's wicked to her. She loves you—I'm sure she does. And it isn't right that you should console yourself for a silly little tiff by philandering with me or any other convenient woman."

"It isn't philandering," he cried indignantly. "I love you as I never loved before in my life. I'd marry you to-day if you'd say so."

"But I'm not going to say so to-day or to-morrow or any other day. I don't love you in the least. But it amuses me to play at love, and it salves my conscience when I think it's for a good cause. There! That's the whole story," and she threw him a look that conveyed finality.

He debated mentally for the best part of half a minute before speaking. Certainly Mrs. Darling was not flattering. He realized that hers was the stronger character.

"Have you always been so particular?" he asked, unable quite to dissemble his vexation.

"That's just it," she answered. "I haven't been. But I'm resolved to turn over a new leaf. I've sent so many to the devil that my heart is set on sending you to—to Heaven instead."

He opened his arms, hungrily and invitingly, and said:

"I promise. I'll take you on your own terms, since that is the only way."

"As a gentleman you can't break your word, you know," she reminded him. "Hadn't you better wait until after luncheon to think it over?"

"But luncheon won't be served for—"

"Oh, yes, it will," she interrupted. "It's served now. We mustn't set every one talking and gossiping by being late and coming in together." She was already on her feet, and his arms dropped disconsolately. "I'll go at once, and you can think a while and then follow."

"Just one kiss first," he implored.

"Not until you have thought it over. It wouldn't be fair to any one of us three." And she disappeared through the maze of orange trees.

When Carleigh reached the luncheon table it was to find Nina in animated conversation with a tall, bald, red-mustached man who sat on her left. Carleigh found his place opposite, but she barely noticed him, so thoroughly did she appear interested.

Her companion, who proved to be Sir Guy Waldron, the archÆologist, just back from an excavating expedition to Sardis, in Asia Minor, was telling her about the buried riches of Cr[oe]sus, and his hope of digging them up.

The spectacle robbed Sir Caryll of his last vestige of appetite, and Lady Mary Wycherley, who couldn't take her eyes off him—she did so love romance—whispered to Mrs. Blythe, the poetess, her nearest neighbor, that it was quite clear the poor boy was eating his heart out in melancholy over the inhuman treatment of "that shocking American girl."

"It's clear he must be eating something in private," returned the poetess, who could be very literal when her pen was idle, "for he hasn't put spoon to his soup, or fork to these delicious salmon cutlets."

In point of fact Carleigh was, for the moment at least, an impenetrable puzzle to every one present, save only Mrs. Darling and his host and hostess.

They couldn't at all understand how, with the scandal still fresh in society's mind, he could face a house full of persons, many of whom were comparative strangers and a few of whom he had never before met.

And the oddest part of it was that most of them never solved the riddle, owing to the manner in which fate chose to shape immediately succeeding events.

Directly after luncheon the entire party went motoring with Cragmoor Castle as the objective, and by prior arrangement Mrs. Darling occupied a seat next to Sir Guy, who drove his own car.

Carleigh, to his utter dismay, found himself with the poetess and four very young persons who did nothing but giggle.

They had tea at the castle, and Caryll strove valiantly to disentangle Nina from the party for a much-desired tÊte-À-tÊte; but with the poorest success.

In spite of every effort he was forced to share her with Captain Belden, a very loquacious young gentleman with an exaggerated idea of his own wit. And the fact that Nina laughed appreciatively at his dullest jokes plunged poor Caryll into deeper and deeper gloom.

On the way back to Carfen, Mrs. Blythe chose to dilate at considerable length upon Masefield and his new school, which she couldn't in the least understand, and denounced as lacking in every element of true poetic art.

Nor did Carleigh's monosyllabic comments and long silences in any wise discourage her. The young people giggled as persistently as the poetess talked, and altogether the journey was as nearly maddening as anything he had ever experienced.

Had it not been for the gladdening trust in a long evening with Nina under the stars his reason must have quite succumbed. As it was it merely tottered and threatened.

With the true Briton convention is a fetish. It ranks in his worshipful regard next to the throne—I was going to say above the throne.

Carleigh might kick over the traces of betrothal and marriage, incited by an unconventional matron from the States, but he couldn't think of defying the convention which forbids gentlemen to leave the dinner-table until the ladies have had a quarter of an hour, at the very least, to themselves in which to exchange confidences.

He didn't care in the least for the liqueurs and the cigars, nor for the gross stories which were not at all droll. There was only one thing he did care for.

He wanted to tell Nina he had thought it over very carefully, while Mrs. Blythe talked of Masefield and the callow ones giggled, and that he was more than ever determined to accept her proposition with its accompanying condition in the utmost good faith.

But it never once entered his mind to desert his fellow men until they were of one mind and ready to rejoin the ladies.

He did manage, however, to change to a seat nearer the door so that he might be one of the first in the drawing-room and gain Nina's side before the coveted place was pre-empted.

"At last!" he breathed with a sigh as she drew her skirt aside for him. Fashion having decreed scant skirts the action was more a habit than an actuality.

"You've missed me, then?" She spoke most casually.

"Have I? I've been absolutely wretched. I've been longing for you every second of the time. Do let us go out on the terrace or in the park—or somewhere that we can be quite alone together. I have so much to say to you."

His gaze was devouringly bent upon her eyes, and he was sure that he saw commiseration there. She did sympathize with him, then. She would go. In five minutes he would be holding her in his arms. But he misinterpreted.

"I'm so sorry, Caryll," she said, and it was like a dash of iced water. "I'm so sorry. But I've promised to play bridge. See, they are bringing in the tables."

"You mustn't," he commanded. "I can't let you. I've been waiting hours—oh, so many, many, long, long hours. I can't—"

And then he was conscious that some one was standing at his elbow, speaking. It was Sir Guy Waldron—and he was saying:

"Now, Mrs. Darling, if you are quite ready."