“If he should happen to drop in unexpectedly it will give Ellie the shock of her life,” she mused; and the telegram was smuggled into the hands of the porter to be sent as occasion offered.

* * * * *

Those who knew Mr. Brookes Ormsby best were wont to say that the world of action, a world lusting avidly for resourceful men, had lost the chance of acquiring a promising leader when he was born heir to the Ormsby millions.  Be that as it may, he made the most of such opportunities for the exercising of his gift as came to one for whom the long purse leveled most barriers; had been making the most of the present leaguer of a woman’s heart—­a citadel whose capitulation was not to be compassed by mere money-might, he would have said.

Up to the final day of the long westward flight all things had gone well with him.  True, Elinor had not thawed visibly, but she had been tolerant; Penelope had amused herself at no one’s expense save her own—­a boon for which Ormsby did not fail to be duly thankful; and Mrs. Brentwood had contributed her mite by keeping hands off.

But at the dining-car luncheon on the last day’s run, Penelope, languishing at a table for two with an unresponsive Ormsby for a vis-a-vis, made sly mention of the possible recrudescence of one David Kent at a place called Gaston:  this merely to note the effect upon an unresponsive table-mate.

In Penelope’s observings there was no effect perceptible.  Ormsby said “Ah?” and asked if she would have more of the salad.  But later, in a contemplative half-hour with his pipe in the smoking-compartment, he let the scrap of information sink in and take root.

Hitherto Kent had been little more than a name to him; a name he had never heard on Elinor’s lips.  But if love be blind in the teens and twenties, it is more than apt to have a keen gift of insight in the thirties and beyond.  Hence, by the time Ormsby had come to the second filling of his pipe, he had pieced together bits of half-forgotten gossip about the Croydon summer, curious little reticences on Elinor’s part, vague hints let fall by Mrs. Brentwood; enough to enable him to chart the rock on which his love-argosy was drifting, and to name it—­David Kent.

Now to a well-knit man of the world—­who happens to be a heaven-born diplomatist into the bargain—­to be forewarned is to be doubly armed.  At the end of the half-hour of studious solitude in the smoking-room, Ormsby had pricked out his course on the chart to a boat’s-length; had trimmed his sails to the minutest starting of a sheet.  A glance at his watch and another at the time-table gave him the length of his respite.  Six hours there were; and a dining-car dinner intervened.  Those six hours, and the dinner, he decided, must win or lose the race.

Picturing for ourselves, if we may, how nine men out of ten would have given place to panic-ardor, turning a possible victory into a hopeless rout, let us hold aloof and mark the generalship of the tenth, who chances to be the heaven-born.