"I don't imagine—I know. He found out, somehow, that she was going with us, and just dropped things and ran for it."
"Do you think he did that?"
"Of course he did. And if we're not careful the odium of the whole thing will fall on us."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back from Golden and take Miss Vennor along with us."
"Wouldn't that be assuming a great deal? You would hardly want to tell the President that you had brought his daughter back because you were afraid she might do something rash."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Burton, who was rather out of his element in trying to pick his way among the social ploughshares.
"But that is what you will have to tell him, if we go back," she insisted, with delicious effrontery.
Burton thought about it for a moment, and ended by accepting the fact merely because it was thrust upon him. "I couldn't very well do that, you know," he objected, and she nearly laughed in his face because he had fallen so readily into her small trap; "but if we don't break it off, what shall we do?"
"Do? why, nothing at all! Mr. Vennor asks us to take his daughter with us on a little pleasure-trip, and he doesn't tell us to bring her back instanter if we happen to find Fred on the train."