"Oh, I say!"
"And, knowing what I do of Anton, I daren't send him with the car. Oh, it's maddening!"
"I can drive a car, Miss Thompson, if that's all you want."
"Really? Oh, splendid! Just a second while I write the cablegram."
She started for the desk, but stopped midway with a look of despair.
"It's no use! I had forgotten. Mr. Robert Baxter is out with the car; there's nothing to be done." She sank hopelessly into a chair.
Lionel Fitz-Brown stroked his mustache, adjusted his eyeglass and then, with a flutter of the ancestral spirit, rose to the situation.
"But, my dear Miss Thompson," he drawled, "if we have twenty minutes, I don't mind telling you that I can do my mile in ten."
Betty sprang to her feet. "You can?"
The gardener screwed up his eyeglass and nodded. "Sprinting is one of the things I do rather well."