of waiting.  It was about half-past twelve when there was a sound of a carriage coming up the driveway.  It was probably Derek; and yet there was a possibility that, the automobile having broken down, Reggie and Dorothea had been obliged to finish their journey in a humbler way than that in which they had started.  Diane hurried to the terrace.  The moon had disappeared, but the stars were out, and the night had grown colder.  The pines surrounding the hotel shot up weirdly against the midnight sky, soughing with a low murmur, like the moan of primeval nature.  Up the ascent from the main road the carriage crept wearily, while Diane’s heart poured itself out in a sort of incoherent prayer that Dorothea might have arrived before her father.  The horses dragged themselves to the steps, and Derek Pruyn sprang out.

Instinctively Diane fell back.

“Oh, it’s you,” she gasped, unable for the instant to say more.

“Yes,” he returned, quickly, peering down into her face.  “What news?”

“Dorothea hasn’t come.  The—­the other person has gone.”

“Gone?  How—­gone?”

“He went away of his own accord.”

“That is, you sent him.”

“Not exactly; he was willing to go.  He saw he’d been doing wrong.”

A porter having come from the hotel and seized Derek’s valise, it was necessary for them to go in and attend to the small preliminaries of arrival.  When they were finished Derek returned to Diane, who had seated herself in a wicker chair beside one of the numerous tea-tables to which a large part of the hall was given up.  Under the eye of the drowsy clerk, who still kept his place at the office desk, she felt a certain sense of protection, even though the width of the hotel lay between them.

“Now, tell me,” Derek said, in his quick, commanding tones; “tell me everything.”

The repressed intensity of his bearing had on Diane the effect of making her more calmly mistress of herself.  Quietly, and in a manner as matter-of-fact as she could make it, she told her tale from the beginning.  She narrated her summons from Mrs. Wappinger, her visit to his own house, her arrangements there, her journey to Lakefield, and her interview with Carli Wappinger.  Without making light of what he and Dorothea had undertaken to do, she reduced their fault to a minimum, turning it into indiscretion rather than anything more grave.  She laid stress on the excellence of the young man’s character, as well as on the promptness with which he had relinquished his part in the plan as soon as he saw its true nature.  In spite of himself Derek began to think of the lad as of one who had sprung to his help in a moment of need, and to whom he was indebted for a service.  Not until Diane ceased speaking was he able to brush this absurd impression away, in the knowledge that Dorothea, who should have arrived nearly two hours ago, was still out in the dark.  That, for the moment, was the one fact to which everything else was subordinate.