“Don’t you think,” asked Victoria, summoning her courage, “that Austen Vane ought to be told?”

“Yes,” the doctor repeated decidedly, “I am sure of it.  Everybody who knows Austen Vane as I do has the greatest admiration for him.  You probably remember him in that Meader case,—­he isn’t a man one would be likely to forget,—­and I know that this quarrel with his father isn’t of Austen’s seeking.”

“Oughtn’t he to be told—­at once?” said Victoria.

“Yes,” said the doctor; “time is valuable, and we can’t predict what Hilary will do.  At any rate, Austen ought to know—­but the trouble is, he’s at Jenney’s farm.  I met him on the way out there just before your friend the Englishman caught me.  And unfortunately I have a case which I cannot neglect.  But I can send word to him.”

“I know where Jenney’s farm is,” said Victoria; “I’ll drive home that way.”

“Well,” exclaimed Dr. Tredway, heartily, “that’s good of you.  Somebody who knows Hilary’s situation ought to see him, and I can think of no better messenger than you.”

And he helped her into the runabout.

Young Mr. Rangely being a gentleman, he refrained from asking Victoria questions on the drive out of Ripton, and expressed the greatest willingness to accompany her on this errand and to see her home afterwards.  He had been deeply impressed, but he felt instinctively that after such a serious occurrence, this was not the time to continue to give hints of his admiration.  He had heard in England that many American women whom he would be likely to meet socially were superficial and pleasure-loving; and Arthur Rangely came of a family which had long been cited as a vindication of a government by aristocracy,—­a family which had never shirked responsibilities.  It is not too much to say that he had pictured Victoria among his future tenantry; she had appealed to him first as a woman, but the incident of the afternoon had revealed her to him, as it were, under fire.

They spoke quietly of places they both had visited, of people whom they knew in common, until they came to the hills—­the very threshold of Paradise on that September evening.  Those hills never failed to move Victoria, and they were garnished this evening in no earthly colours, —­rose-lighted on the billowy western pasture slopes and pearl in the deep clefts of the streams, and the lordly form of Sawanec shrouded in indigo against a flame of orange.  And orange fainted, by the subtlest of colour changes, to azure in which swam, so confidently, a silver evening star.

In silence they drew up before Mr. Jenney’s ancestral trees, and through the deepening shadows beneath these the windows of the farm-house glowed with welcoming light.  At Victoria’s bidding Mr. Rangely knocked to ask for Austen Vane, and Austen himself answered the summons.  He held a book in his hand, and as Rangely spoke she saw Austen’s look turn quickly to her, and met it through the gathering gloom between them.  In an instant he was at her side, looking up questioningly into her face, and the telltale blood leaped into hers.  What must he think of her for coming again?  She could not speak of her errand too quickly.