Oh, why had I let Bettina go!

Even if the chauffeurs, all three, were decent enough ordinarily, what if just to-night they had been drinking?

Betty coming across the deserted heath with a drunken driver——

Oh, God, I prayed, don't let anything happen to Bettina....


A quarter past eleven.

I put on a bold face. "They wouldn't, I think, have a motor-car out for Betty at this hour, and the reason she is late is because she has told them she would like the walk."

"They will hardly send a woman with her at this time of night."

We both started violently, and all because a coal had fallen out of the grate on the metal fender.

My mother was the first to speak: "They are haphazard people, I sometimes think.... You don't suppose they would send her back with a groom...?"