"Well, Jacob?" Mr. Spear exclaimed, pausing halfway across the hall; and his daughter, turning, met the reproachful gaze of the family factotum, who stood in the doorway mopping the moisture from his perpetually puzzled wrinkles.

"Well, I've got her," Jacob said. He glanced about him somewhat apprehensively, and then, fixing his eyes again on Héloïse: "I found a fellow sitting in her. He said he'd lost his way and gone to sleep. He was going to cut and run, but I told him he'd have to come here with me and tell you folks what he was doing in the car anyhow."

Jacob fell back, and over his shoulder Héloïse caught sight of a slim boyish figure with white face and rumpled hair, and deep eyes still bewildered with sleep.

"Is this Eaglewood?" Vance Weston asked of the assembled company; then he saw Miss Spear behind the others, and his pallor turned to crimson.

Halo came forward. "Vance—how wonderful. Mother was just asking why I hadn't brought you back to lunch; and here you are!"

He looked at her as if only half understanding. "I couldn't find my way home, so I came back up the road, and when I saw the car was still there I got into it to wait until somebody came along—and I guess I must have fallen asleep."

"Well, that's all right; it's even providential. You've saved Jacob the trouble of going all the way down the hill to get you. Mother, Father, this is Vance Weston, who's staying at Paul's Landing with the Tracys. Mother, can't we have something to eat? You've no idea how inhumanly hungry sunrises make people—don't they, Vance? Oh, and this is Mr. Frenside, whom I've told you about: who writes for The Hour. And this is Mr. Lewis Tarrant—and here's my brother Lorburn. I suppose you're our cousin, too, aren't you, Vance? Lorry, this is our new cousin, Vance Weston."

As she performed this rapid ceremony Halo's eyes dwelt a moment longer on Lewis Tarrant's face than on the others. Ah, he was taking his dose now—a nasty brew! "Shielding" her again; much she cared about being shielded! He would know now that she really had been out in the car in the night, that this unknown boy had been with her, that she didn't care a fig who knew it, and that the escapade had taken place at the very moment when he, Lewis Tarrant, had come to Eaglewood for the weekend, on her express promise that she would tell him definitely, before the end of his visit, if she were going to marry him or not… .