As they had looked at each other when they first met, so they looked at each other again before they parted.  Yet between that meeting and that parting something had happened.  It was in his eyes as he looked at her; it was in her eyes as for one instant, before she dropped bewildering lashes, she gave him back his look.  It meant that South America was not so far away but that a voyager could come back over the same high seas which had conveyed him there.  And that when he came—­

“I’m grateful to you, Mr. Jordan,” Waldron said, shaking hands beside the car, “more than I can say to you.  You have done me a greater kindness than you know.  Good-night—­to you all!”

He went away with Julius without a glance behind after the salute of his lifted hat, which included everybody.

By some common impulse the rest of the party all looked after the two as they walked away toward the station door.

“Seems like an uncommonly nice chap,” was Ashworth’s comment.  “I’ll wager he’s something, somewhere.”

“He has a very interesting face,” his fiancee conceded.

“Yes, hasn’t he?” Dorothy agreed lightly, something evidently being expected of her.

“He may be the tenth wonder of the world,” declared Ridgeway Jordan, springing in to take his old place beside her for the drive of an eighth of a mile left to him; “but I grudge him this hour by you.  Jove, but I thought the drive would never end!”

Julius, after seeing his friend off with a sense of comradeship more worth while than any he had known, walked rapidly back, eager for a word with Dorothy.  Quick as he was, however, she was quicker, and he found her locked into her own room.  By insisting on talking through the door he got her to open it, but there was not so much satisfaction in this as he had expected, because she had extinguished her lights.

“How did you like him?” was his first eager question.

“Very well,” said a cool, low voice in the darkness.  “Much better than the trick you used to carry out your wishes.”

“Trick!” her brother exclaimed, all the angel innocence he could summon in his voice.  “When you wouldn’t tell me a word of where you were going!”

“You guessed it.  It was abominable of you.”

“Oh, see here!  If I hadn’t managed it you wouldn’t have seen him—­and he wouldn’t have seen you.”

“And what of that?” queried the cool voice, cool but sweet.  Dot’s voice, even in real anger, was never harsh.

“Well, what of it?” was the counter-question.  “Can you honestly say you wish you hadn’t met him, a real man like that?”

There was silence.  Julius moved cautiously across the room, avoiding chairs as best he could.  “Be honest now.  Isn’t he the real thing?  And isn’t Ridge Jordan—­”

“Please don’t talk about poor Ridge that way, Jule.”

“Poor Ridge!” cried Julius.  “Well, well, you didn’t speak of him that way this morning.  What’s happened?”