The Fighting Chance

Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun, where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.

Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation; he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, "Scotch or Irish, sir," then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.

He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed meditatively at space.

The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said: "Here endeth our first rendezvous."

"Then let us arrange another immediately," he said, stirring the ice in his glass.

The girl considered him with speculative eyes: "I shouldn't exactly know what to do with you for the next hour if I didn't abandon you."

"Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble of deserting me? That solves the problem."

"I really don't mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward," she said, amused; "I mean that I am going to drive again."

"I see."

"No you don't see at all. There's a telegram; I'm not driving for pleasure--"

She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was of course a drive for pleasure.

"I see," repeated Siward amiably.

"Perhaps you do," she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was on his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that without any reason at all she hesitated.

"I had meant to show you about--the cliffs--the kennels and stables; I'm sorry," she concluded, lingering.

"I'm awfully sorry," he rejoined without meaning anything in particular. That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.

With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling beside her.

The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier's mania was Tandem. She thought it rather nice of her to remember this.