was brought out of her daze of pain by a startling sight. There, parked by the side of old, battered ragged Lady Jane, was another car. A wonderful car. A purple car. Not a dark, royal purple but a blatant, screaming purple. It shone like a mirror and its interior plainly indicated the car caste of Vere de Vere. In the driver’s seat sat a haughty chauffeur in livery. And in the tonneau sat a man who opened the door and bounced out nimbly as Valancy came down the path to the landing-place. He stood under the pines waiting for her and Valancy took in every detail of him.

A stout, short, pudgy man, with a broad, rubicund, good-humoured face — a clean-shaven face, though an unparalysed little imp at the back of Valancy’s paralysed mind suggested the thought, “Such a face should have a fringe of white