Cynthia looked up and down the broad sea front, with its thousands of lamps and droves of promenaders.

"At last I am beginning to size up this dear little island," she said. "I may go with you to a racetrack, I may sit by your side for days in an automobile, I may even eat your luncheon and drink your aunt's St. Galmier, but I may not ask you to accompany me a hundred yards from my hotel to a pier. Very well, I'll quit. But before I go, do tell me one thing. Did you really mean to bring your aunt to Epsom today?"

"Yes."

"A mother's sister sort of aunt--a nice old lady with white hair?"

"One would almost fancy you had met her, Miss Vanrenen."

"Perhaps I may, some day. Father and I are going to Scotland for a month from the twelfth of August. After that, we shall be in the Savoy Hotel about six weeks. Bring her to see me."

Medenham almost jumped when he heard of the projected visit to the Highlands, but some demon of mischief urged him to say:

"Let's reckon up. July, August, September--three months----"

He stopped with a jerk. Cynthia, already aware of some vague power she possessed of stirring this man's emotions, did not fail to detect his air of restraint.

"It isn't a proposition that calls for such a lot of calculation," she said sharply. "Good-night, Mr. Fitzroy. I hope you are punctual morning-time. When there is a date to be kept, I'm a regular alarm clock, my father says."

She sped across the road, and into the hotel. Then Medenham noticed how dark it had become--reminded him of the tropics, he thought--and made for his own caravanserai, while his brain was busy with a number of disturbing but nebulous problems that seemed to be pronounced in character yet singularly devoid of a beginning, a middle, or an end. Indeed, so puzzling and contradictory were they that he soon fell asleep. When he rose at seven o'clock next morning the said problems had vanished. They must have been part and parcel with the glamor of a June night, and a starlit sky, and the blue depths of the sea and of a girl's eyes, for the wizard sun had dispelled them long ere he awoke. But he did not telegraph to Simmonds.

Dale brought the car to the Grand Hotel in good time, and Medenham ran it some distance along the front before drawing up at the 

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