"Well, didn't he?"
"Yes, and no! There is no boy cousin. This is Leslie—only she's called Carmel—the heiress of Cheverley Chase!"
"You!" exclaimed Everard again, gazing at Carmel.
"Don't call me 'the heiress,' Dulcie," protested Carmel. "You know I've said from the very first that I don't intend to take the Chase away from you all. It's yours every bit as much as mine, and more so, because my own real home is in Sicily, and I hope to go back there some day. Everard, will you make friends with me on that understanding, and shake hands? I don't want to turn anybody out of the Chase."
Carmel held out a slim little hand, and Everard accepted it delicately, as if it had been that of a princess.
"I'm still stunned," he remarked. "To think I should have been driving you all this time, and not have known you were Leslie Ingleton! I never chanced to hear your surname. I thought you were Mrs. Rogers' niece."
"And so I am!" laughed Carmel. "At least she's my step-aunt, at any rate. Isn't it a regular Comedy of Errors?"
"Everard," put in Lilias, "why did you turn chauffeur? We thought you had run away to sea!"
"I meant to," answered her brother bitterly, "but when it came to the point of getting employment, I found the only thing I could earn a living at was driving a car. I don't know that I even do that very decently, but at any rate I'm self-supporting. You'd better leave me where I am! It's all I'm good for!"
"Not a bit of it!" answered Carmel. "I've arranged the whole thing in my mind already. We'll make an exchange. Milner shall take charge of the car for the Rogers until they can find another chauffeur, and you shall drive Cousin Clare and Lilias and Dulcie and me back to the Chase. Now don't begin to talk, for it's quite settled, and for once in my life I declare I mean to have my own way!"