ride down as far as the lighthouse on the point, and back. Do not refuse me so slight a favor, I beg of you."

If she had stopped to consider, even for one instant, she would have declined the invitation, but almost before she had decided whether she should say yes or no, Victor Lamont had lifted her in his strong arms, placed her in the cab, and sprung in after her.

Pretty, jolly Sally Gardiner looked a trifle embarrassed.

"Oh, how imprudent, Mr. Lamont!" she cried, clinging to his arm, as the full consciousness of the situation seemed to occur to her. "We had better get out and walk back to the Ocean House."

But it was too late for objections. The driver had already whipped up his horses, and instead of creeping wearily along, after the fashion of tired hack horses, they flew down the beach like the wind.

"Oh, Mrs. Gardiner—Sally!" cried Victor Lamont, in a voice apparently husky with emotion, "the memory of this ride will be with me while life lasts!"

Victor Lamont's voice died away in a hoarse whisper; the hand which caught and held her own closed tighter over it, and the hoarse murmur of the sea seemed further and further away.

Sally Gardiner seemed only conscious of one thing—that Victor Lamont loved her.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

For a moment, the words falling so passionately from the lips of the handsome man sitting beside her, the spell of the moonlight, and the murmur of the waves seemed to lock her senses in a delicious dream. But the dream lasted only a moment. In the next, she had recovered herself.

"Oh, Mr. Lamont, we must—we must get right out and walk back to the hotel! What if anyone should see us riding together? Jay would be sure to hear of it, and there would be trouble in store for both of us.""It is all in a life-time," he murmured. "Can you not be happy here with me----"But she broke away from his detaining hand in alarm. She had been guilty of an imprudent flirtation; but she had meant nothing more. She had drifted into this delusive friendship and companionship without so much as bothering her pretty golden head about how it would end. Now she was just beginning to see how foolish she had been--when this handsome stranger could be nothing to her--nothing.

"We must not ride any further," she declared. "Give orders for 

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