“And did she?”

“She fulfilled her engagement to the letter.  As soon as she was seated I drove away; and for six hours I didn’t hear a sound from her.”

“Six hours?  Did it take you all that time to reach Lakefield?”

“I didn’t go to Lakefield.  I took her to Philadelphia.  My one object was to keep her from meeting the young man that night; but perhaps that’s where I made my mistake.”

“But why?  It was better for her that she shouldn’t.”

“For her, perhaps; but not for every one else.  You see, I lost my way two or three times; though, as I had been over the ground twice already, I was always able to right myself after a while.  Near Trenton, Dorothea got frightened, and when I peeped inside I could see she was crying.  As all danger was over then, I stopped and let her see who I was.”

“Was she angry?”

“Quite the contrary!  The poor child was terrified at her own rashness, and very much relieved to find she had been kept from being as foolish as she had intended.  I got in beside her, and let her have her cry out in comfort.  After that we ate some sandwiches and took heart.  It was weird work, in the dead of night and along the lonely roads; but we pushed on, and crept into Philadelphia between one and two in the morning.”

“That was a very brave, act, Mademoiselle.”  Bienville’s eyes glistened and his face lighted up with an ardor that was not dampened by the casual, almost listless, air with which she told her story.

“It might have been better if I had let the whole thing alone.”

“Why so?”

“You can rarely interfere in other people’s affairs without doing more harm than good.  If I had let them go their own way, Diane Eveleth wouldn’t have been put in a false position.”

“Ah?”

“That’s the other part of the story.  If I had known, I should have left the matter in her hands.  She would have managed it better than I. As it was, she made my bit of help superfluous.”

“I should find it hard to credit that,” he said, twisting his fingers nervously.

“You won’t when I tell you.”

In the quiet, unaccentuated manner in which she had given her own share in the action she gave Diane’s.  Shading her eyes with the hand-screen, she was able to watch his play of feature, and note how the first forced smile of bravado faded into an expression of crestfallen gravity.

“You see,” she concluded, “they were frantic at Dorothea’s failure to appear.  When you arrived they naturally thought it was she; and if Derek Pruyn hadn’t lost his head when he saw you, he wouldn’t have tried to thrust her out of sight as though she were caught in a crime.  It was so like a man to do it; a woman would have had a dozen ways of disarming your suspicion, while he did the very thing to arouse it.  I don’t blame you for thinking what you did—­not in the least.  I don’t even blame you for telling it, since it would seem to bear out—­what you said before.  I should only blame you—­”