“I never thought of that,” I said humbly.

“I have known retail liars,” he went on.  “But I guess you are the only wholesaler in the business.  When other people are content with ones and twos you get them out in grosses, packed for export!”

He went on slamming me like this for miles.  Anybody else would have given him up as hopeless.  I don’t want to praise myself, but if I have one good quality it’s staying power.  I pleaded and argued, and expostulated and explained, with the determination of a man whose back is to the wall.  I wasn’t going to lose Freddy so long as there was breath in my body.  However, it wasn’t the least good in the world.  Jones was as impervious as sole-leather, and as unshaken as a marble pillar.

Then I played my last card.

I told him the truth!  Not the whole truth, of course, but within ten per cent of it.  About Freddy, you know, and how she was determined not to marry before her elder sister, and how Eleanor’s only preference seemed to be for him, and how with such a slender clue to work on I had engineered everything up to this point.

“If I have seemed to you intolerably prying and officious,” I said, “well, at any rate, Jones, there’s my excuse.  It rests with you to give me Freddy or take her from me.  Turn back, and you’ll make me the happiest man alive; go forward, and—­and—­”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

His tread lost some of its elasticity.  He was short-circuiting inside.  Positively he began to look sort of sympathetic and human.

“Westoby,” he said at last, in a voice almost of awe, “when they get up another world’s fair you must have a building to yourself.  You’re colossal, that’s what you are!”

“I’m only in love,” I said.

“Well, that’s the love that moves mountains,” he said.  “If anybody had told me that I should . . . " He stopped irresolutely on the word.

“Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!” he bleated.

I was too wise to say a word.  I simply motioned James to switch the car around and back up.  I shooed Jones into the tonneau and turned the knob on him.  He snuggled back in the cushions, and smiled—­yes, smiled—­with a beautiful, blue-eyed, faraway, indulgent expression that warmed me like spring sunshine.  Not that I felt absolutely safe even yet—­of course I couldn’t—­but still—­

We ran into Freddy and Eleanor at the lodge gates.  I had already telephoned the former to expect us, so as to have everything fall out naturally when the time came.  We stopped the car, and descended—­Jones and I—­and he walked straight off with Eleanor, while I side-stepped with Freddy.

She and I were almost too excited to talk.

It was now or never, you know, and there was an awfully solemn look about both their backs that was either reassuring or alarming—­we couldn’t decide quite which.  Freddy and I simply held our breath and waited.