"To be sure," she said, "I forgot. You manage the car so well that I forgot that you can't do anything you like with it. You must excuse me." 

At these words a comforting and fragrant warmth, the very subtle aroma of well-being, stole about Antony's heart, and his face relaxed insensibly. He could the more readily excuse her ingenuous error because he had more than once in the last hour fallen into it himself. It was difficult to believe that his control of this cumbrous soft-bitted monster, answering so sweetly to the slightest contraction of his wrist, was merely nominal; that only the most extraordinary good fortune stood between him and crushing ruin. 

"Why do you suppose that ugly fat man wanted to stop us, Mr. Tony?" Nette demanded suddenly--"did he have any right to, or any reason?" 60 

60

Antony sighed thoughtfully, and his various feelings struggled in his face. 

"As to his rights," he answered judicially, "I really could not say. He certainly had some kind of badge. But as to his reasons, I fear the only difficulty will be to count them." 

"To count them?" she repeated curiously. "Are there so many, then?" 

Antony shrugged his shoulders expressively. 

"In the first place," he began, "we are supposed to have purposely irritated an extremely unpleasant old snake to the point of biting, perhaps fatally, a French chauffeur. If fatally, the law wants us on that account. In the second place, we have stolen a large 61 and costly touring car and are apparently occupied in making away with it as fast as possible. And the law wants us on that account. In the third place, we have violated the speed regulations of Huntersville and refused to stop when called upon to answer for it, and the law wants us on that account. In the fourth place, we have knocked down and, for all I know, seriously injured an official of Huntersville, and the law wants us on that account. Do I make myself clear?" 

61

"Quite clear," she replied soberly, and then, without the slightest warning, she burst into a rich gurgle of laughter, so rollicking and infectious that Antony had joined her before he realised it, and the wood rang with their united mirth. The massive mechanism, whose least lever they could not have explained, had it been to save their lives, 

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