This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.

In his way he had been in love many, many times.  Now for the first time he worshiped a woman.

When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to the house.

It was nine o’clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the breakfast-room.

“Why, Max, is it you?  What a strange time to arrive!  And where have you been?  You look as if you’d been up all night!” cried she, and she ran forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him, with an expression of amazement and horror.

“I have been up all night,” said he, briefly.  “I’ve driven all the way from London—­”

“What!”

“And—­and I’ve brought some one with me—­some one who is ill, who is in trouble.  Some one—­”

A cry broke from her lips.  She had grown quite white, and her hands had dropped to her sides.

She understood.

“Dudley!” she whispered.  “Where is he?  Why haven’t you brought him in?”

“He is at the gate.  Where is my father?  I must speak to him first, or to mother.”

Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him.  In a few words he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do, that there was a possibility that the police might come to make inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley.  But Doreen, who insisted on hearing everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything about it.

Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms—­Max on one side and Bartram on the other.

By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do so.  When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he came down.

“Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?”

Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration: 

“Oh, that’s the nurse.  You see—­he was so ill—­”

Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.

“Why doesn’t she come in, then?  Of course she must come in.”

And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.

“Aren’t you coming in?  They’ve taken your patient upstairs,” she said gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.