They looked up, to see a remarkably pretty young girl, who could scarcely have been more than eighteen years old.  Her eyes were black as sloes, and flashed like smoldering fires.  A great mass of hair of the same color was piled on the top of her head in grown-up fashion, and her gown, of a magenta hue, which set off her dark beauty to perfection, was cut in the most recent—­too recent, in fact—­style.

“Can you direct me to Mr. Mortlake’s aeroplane factory?” she demanded in an imperious tone.  Evidently the flushed, healthy-looking young people, who had been playing tennis so hard, were very despicable in her eyes.

“There it is, down the road there,” volunteered Roy.  “It’s that barn-like place.”

The appellation was unfortunate.  The girl’s eyes flashed angrily.

“My name is Regina Mortlake,” she said angrily.  “I am Mr. Mortlake’s daughter.  He is not in the habit of putting up barns, I can assure you.”

“I beg your pardon——­” began Roy, quite taken aback by the extraordinary energy with which the reproof to his harmless remark had been given.  But the dark-eyed beauty in the automobile had given a quick order to the chauffeur, and the car skimmed on down the road.

Later that day the Silver Cobweb ascended for a flight.  It had nothing more the matter with it on the day of the break-down than the heated cylinders, which, as Mortlake had prophesied, soon cooled.  But Mortlake himself did not take up the silvery aeroplane on this occasion.  A new figure was at the wheel, clad in dainty dark aviation togs and bonnet, with a fluttering, flowing veil of the same color, which streamed out like a flag of defiance.

The new driver was Miss Regina Mortlake.

They learned later that the girl had taken frequent flights in the South, where her father had, for a time, entered into the business of giving aeroplane flights for money at county fairs and the like.  His daughter had taken naturally to the sport, and was an accomplished air woman.  She knew no fear, and her imperious, ambitious spirit made her a formidable rival even to the foreign flying women who competed at various international aviation meets.

While his daughter spun through the air, Eugene Mortlake sat in his little glass-enclosed office in one corner of the noisy aeroplane plant.  Four finished machines were now ready, and he would have felt capable of facing any tests with them had it not been for his uneasy fear of the Prescott aeroplane.  But he had evolved a scheme by which he thought he would succeed in putting Peggy and Roy out of the race altogether.  It was in the making that afternoon in the little office.

Opposite to Mortlake sat two men whom we have seen before.  But in the cheap, but neat suits they now wore, and with their faces clean-shaven of the growth of stubby beard that had formerly covered them, it would have been somewhat difficult to recognize the two ill-favored tramps who had been routed by Peggy in such a plucky manner.  But, nevertheless, they were the men.