He paused, and she found herself watching with a strange fascination the face almost marble-like in its steadiness.
"Some day—perhaps soon," he went on, the arm unmoved, "you will be Queen of Galavia." She shuddered. "You can then strip away my epaulets if you choose. For the moment, however, I must regard you as a prisoner of war and ask your parole, as a gentleman and an officer, not to leave the car while I investigate the trouble with the motor. Otherwise—" he added composedly, "we shall have to remain as we are."
She hesitated, her chin thrown up and her eyes blazing; then, with a glance at the unmoving arm, she bowed reluctant assent.
"All I promise is to remain in the car," she said. "May I go back into the tonneau?"
Satisfying himself that the engine was temporarily dead, he responded, with a half-smile, "That promise I think is sufficient."
He bent to his task of diagnosis. After much futile spinning of the crank, he rose and contemplated the stalled engine.
"Since this machine went out with lamps unlighted, and I have no matches in this garb, I must go to that farmhouse up the hillside—where the light shines through the trees—. Will Your Highness regard your parole as effective until my return, not to leave the car? Yes? I thank Your Highness; I shall not be long."
The girl for answer honked the horn in several loud blasts, and he stopped with a murmured apology to silence it by tearing off the bulb and throwing it to one side.
The Colonel turned and took his way through the woods, statuesquely upright and spectral in his long Arab cloak.
Benton and McGuire had just passed the crossing where Von Ritz had left the main road, when McGuire's quick ear caught the familiar tooting of the other horn and brought his hand to his employer's arm. The car was stopped, and McGuire, by match-light, examined the road with its frosty mud unmarked by fresh automobile tracks, save those running back from their own tires.