“Let go the horse!” she said fiercely, trying to recapture the reins.  “You’ve nothing to do with me any more.”

“Haven’t I?  Oh, by all means tell your Yankee that I’ve waylaid you.  I shouldn’t at all object to an interview with him.  In fact, I rather think of asking for it.  But if you want to prevent it, you’ve got to do what you’re told.”

He came closer, and spoke with slow emphasis.  “You’ve got to arrange a time—­when I can see you—­alone? When shall it be?”

Silence.  But far ahead there were sounds as of some one approaching.  Delane leapt on the step of the cart.

“This is Monday.  Wednesday night—­get rid of everybody!  You can do it if you like.  I shall come at nine.  You’ve got to let me in.”

Her white, quivering face was all his answer.

“Don’t forget,” he said, jumping down.  “Good-night!”

And in a second he was gone, where, she could not tell.

The reins fell from her grasp.  She leant back in the cart, half fainting.  The horse, finding the reins on his neck, strayed to the grassy side of the road, and began grazing.  A short time passed.  In another minute or two the left wheel would have gone done into a deep ditch.

“Hallo!” cried a man’s voice.  “What the matter?”

Rachel tried to rouse herself, but could only murmur inarticulately.  The man jumped off his bicycle, propped it against a tree, and came running to her.

He saw a woman, in a khaki felt hat and khaki dress, sitting hunched up in a fainting state on the seat of a light cart.  He was just in time to catch the horse and turn it back to the road.  Then in his astonishment John Dempsey altogether forgot himself.

“Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Delane!  Why, you’ve had a faint.  But never mind.  Cheer up!  I’ll get you home safe.”

And Rachel, reviving, opened her heavy eyes to see stooping over her the face of the lad in the hooded cart whom she had last seen in the night of that November snowstorm, two years before.

“What did you say?” she asked stupidly.  Then, raising herself, with an instinctive gesture she smoothed back her hair from her face, and straightened her hat.  “Thank you, I’m all right.”

Dempsey’s mouth as he retreated from her shaped itself to an involuntary grin.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am—­but I think I’ve seen you in Canada.  Didn’t I once come to your place, with a parcel from Mr. Grimes—­that was my employer—­of Redminster?  I remember you had a Jap servant.  And there was another time, I think”—­the lad’s eyes fixed her, contracted a little, and sharp with curiosity—­“when you and Mr. Dick Tanner gave me that fizzling hot coffee—­don’t you remember?—­in that awful blizzard two years ago?  And Mr. Tanner gave the horses a feed, too.  Awfully good chap, Mr. Tanner.  I don’t know what I should have done without that coffee.”

Rachel was still deathly white, but she had recovered possession of herself, and her mind was working madly through a score of possibilities.