“Alas!” he said, “it happens to be our mixing day, and the factories are hermetically closed while the process goes forward. Any other day, madame, that your fancy brings you over the dunes, I should be delighted—but not to-day. I tell you frankly there is danger. You surely would not run into it.” He looked up at her with his searching gaze.
“Ah! you think it is easy to frighten me, Herr von Holzen,” she cried, with a little laugh.
“No; but I would not for the world that you should unwittingly run any risks in this place.”
As he spoke, he led the horse quietly to the gate, and Mrs. Vansittart, seeing her helplessness, submitted with a good grace.
Roden made no comment, and followed, not ill pleased, perhaps, at this simple solution of his difficulty.
Von Holzen did not refer to the incident until late in the evening, when Roden was leaving the works.
“This is too serious a time,” he said, “to let women, or vanity, interfere in our plans. You know that the deaths are on the increase. Anything in the nature of an inquiry at this time would mean ruin, and—perhaps worse. Be careful of that woman. I sometimes think that she is fooling you.—But I think,” he added to himself, when the gate was closed behind Roden, “that I can fool her.”