Keeping his eyes upon the road, Burns, in a gay mood now, kept up a running fire of talk, to which Charlotte, as became necessary, responded.  Leaver, straw hat in hand, also stared straight ahead, and Charlotte, unobserved by either companion, looked at the head below her, its heavy, dark-brown hair ruffled by the wind of their progress, noted—­not for the first time—­the fine line of the partial profile, the shoulder in its gray flannel, the well-knit hand, tanned, like its owner’s face, with much exposure.  And, as she made these furtive observations, something within her breast, which she had thought well under control, became suddenly unmanageable.

“I’m sorry to desert you here, so ungallantly,” Burns declared, bringing the car to a standstill at a cross-road.  “If my friend here were quite fit I’d put him down, too, and give him the pleasure of walking in with you.  In a week or two more I’ll turn him loose.  Looks pretty healthy, doesn’t he?”

“I’m entirely able to walk in with Miss Ruston now,” said Leaver, standing, hat in hand, in the road, as Charlotte adjusted her belongings and prepared to walk rapidly away.

“That’s my affair, for a bit longer,” and Burns put out a peremptory hand.  “Be good and jump in.  The lady will excuse you, and I won’t, so there you are.  Forgive me, Miss Ruston, and don’t bring on heart failure by walking too fast in this August sun.”

“I won’t.  Good-bye, and thank you both,” and Charlotte set briskly off toward home, while the car swept round the turn and disappeared into a hollow of the road.

“That’s what I call a particularly worth-while girl,” commented Burns, as the Imp carried them away.  “Beauty, and sense, and spirit, not to mention originality and a few other attributes.  You don’t often get them all combined.  Good old family, according to my wife, but all gone now, and this girl left to make her way on her own resources.  But perhaps you know all this already, since you’ve met her before?”

“I know the main facts?—­yes,” Leaver responded.  His lips had taken on a curiously tight set, since the car had left the corner.  His eyes, under their strongly marked brows, narrowed a little, as he looked out across a field of corn yellowing in the sunlight.  “She has visited more or less in Baltimore, where she has been very much admired.”

“Why ’has been’?” queried Burns.  “She doesn’t look like a ‘has-been’ to me.  More like very much of a ’now-and-here’—­eh?”

“I mean only that since she has been thrown upon her own resources she has applied herself closely to the study of photography, and has been little seen in society.”

“I imagine when she was seen she kept a few fellows guessing.  She looks to me as if she might have refused her full share of men.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

That which Burns would have enjoyed saying next he refrained from.  But to himself he made the observation:  “By the signs I haven’t much doubt you were one of them, old man.”  Aloud he questioned innocently: