“Well, you see, we are to be married as soon as she arrives.  We go straight from here to the clergyman’s house; he’s waiting for us; in ten minutes’ time I shall be her husband; and then everything will be all right.”

“How cleverly you’ve arranged it!”

“I had to make my arrangements pretty close,” Carli explained, in a tone of pride.  “There were a good many difficulties to overcome, but I did it.  Dorothea has had no trouble at all, and will have none; that is”, he added, with a sigh, at the recollection of what Diane had just said, “as far as getting down here is concerned.  She went to tea at the Belfords’, and on coming out she found a motor waiting for her at the door.  She walked into it without asking questions and sat down; and that’s all.  She doesn’t know whose motor it is, or where she’s going, except that she is being taken toward me.  I provided her with everything.  She’s got nothing to do but sit still till she gets here, when she will be married almost before she knows she has arrived.”

“It’s certainly most romantic; and if one has to do such things, they couldn’t be done better.”

“Well, one has to—­sometimes.”

“Yes; so I see.”

“What do you suppose Derek Pruyn will say?” he asked, after a brief pause.

“I haven’t the least idea what he’ll say—­in these circumstances.  Of course, I always knew—­But there’s no use speaking about that now.”

“Speaking about what now?” he asked, sharply.

“Oh, nothing!  One must be with Mr. Pruyn constantly—­live in his house—­to understand him.  You can always count on his being kinder than he seems at first, or on the surface.  During the last months I was with Dorothea I could see plainly enough that in the end she would get her way.”

He paused abruptly in his walk and confronted her.

“Then, for Heaven’s sake,” he demanded, “why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“You never asked me.  I couldn’t go around shouting it out for nothing.  Besides, it was only my opinion, in which, after all, I am quite likely to be wrong.”

“But quite likely to be right.”

“I suppose so.  Naturally, I should have told you,” she went on, humbly, “if I had thought that you wanted to hear; but how was I to know that?  One doesn’t talk about other people’s private affairs unless one is invited.  In any case, it doesn’t matter now.  A man who can cut the Gordian knot as you can doesn’t care to hear that there’s a way by which it might have been unravelled.”

“I’m not so sure about that.  There are cases in which the longest way round is the shortest way home, and if—­”

“But I didn’t suppose you would consider so cautious a route as that.”

“I shouldn’t for myself; but, you see, I have to think of Dorothea.”

“But I’ve already told you that there’s no occasion for that.  If Dorothea has made her choice with her eyes open—­”