“Oh, Joan, I don’t like it!” she whispered.  “What mad thing have you done?”

“Nothing that can’t be put right!  Nothing!  Nothing!” Joan caught eagerly at the argument.  “Oh, I was a fool!  But if you’ll only help me to-night, I am sure everything will be arranged.”

The words were bold enough, but the girl’s voice trailed off into a low, unsteady whisper, as terror at the rash plan which she had made and must now carry through caught at her heart.  “Oh, Miranda, do be kind!”

“When do you want the car?” asked Miranda.

“Immediately after we get to Harrel.”

“Joan!”

Miranda herself was growing frightened.  She stood torn with indecision.  Joan’s distress pleaded on the one side, dread of some tragic mystery upon the other.  For the first time in her life Joan was in some desperate crisis of destiny.  Her feet and hands twitched as though she were bound fast in the coils of a net she could not break.  What wisdom of experience could she bring to help her to escape?  On what wild and hopeless venture might she not be set?

“Yes, yes,” Joan urged eagerly.  “I have thought it all out.  I want you to tell your chauffeur privately to return along the avenue after he has set you down.  There’s a road on the right a few yards down.  If he will turn into that and wait behind the big clump of rhododendrons I will join him immediately.”

“But it will be noticed that you have gone.  People will ask for you,” Miranda objected.

“No, I shall be back again within the hour.  There will be a crowd of people.  And lots won’t imagine that I should ever come to the dance at all.”  Even at that moment a little smile played about the lips.  “And if the ball had been a week ago, I shouldn’t have gone, should I?  I should still be wearing sandals,” she explained, as she looked down at the buckles of her trim satin slippers, “and haughtily wishing you all good night in the hall here.  No, it will be easy enough.  I shall just shake hands with Mrs. Willoughby, pass on with the rest of our party into the ball-room and then slip out by the corridor at the side of the park.”

“It’s dangerous, Joan!” said Miranda.

“Oh, I know, but——­” Joan rose suddenly with her eyes upon the door.  “The others are coming.  Miranda, will you help me?  I would have driven over to Harrel in my own little car.  But it’s open and I should have got blown about until everybody would have begun asking why in the world I used it.  Oh, Miranda, quick!”

Her ears had heard the voices already in the hall.  Miranda heard them too.  In a moment the door would be thrown open.  She must make up her mind now.

“Very well.  The first turning to the right down the avenue and behind the rhododendrons.  I’ll tell the chauffeur.”

“And no one else!  Not even Dennis!”

“Joan!”

“No, not even Dennis!  Promise me!”

Millie Splay was heard to be inquiring for them both.