The sun was just sinking when Mr. Stuart’s weary cavalcade stopped in front of a great iron gate. The gate was covered with rust and hung loose on its hinges. It opened into a splendid avenue of cypress trees. As far as the eye could see on each side of the road, ran overgrown hedges of the Rose of Sharon. The bushes were in full bloom and the masses of white blossoms gleamed in the gathering shadows like lines of new fallen snow.
“How beautiful!” exclaimed the four “Automobile Girls” in chorus.
Mr. Stuart looked anxiously up the lonely avenue as his party stumbled along the rough road and peered cautiously into the hedge first on one side then on the other. It would have been easy for an army to hide itself in the cover of the thicket, which hemmed them in on all sides in an impenetrable wall of green.
“I feel extremely uneasy, Robert,” declared Miss Sallie, her face pale under the stress of the day’s experiences.
Old Madame de Villiers smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I have no fear for myself,” she said. “My husband is a soldier. I have followed him through two great wars. What comes must come. It is all in the day’s business. But the countess, she is different. She is in my charge; nothing must happen to her. I assure you, Mr. Stuart, it is of the utmost importance that the Countess Sophia be protected.”
Miss Sallie held her head very high. Madame de Villiers was their guest, so Miss Stuart would say nothing. But why should Madame de Villiers think the safety of the Countess Sophia of more importance than that of the four “Automobile Girls?” Miss Sarah Stuart had other ideas. She was equally determined that no harm should overtake any one of her charges.
The narrow avenue finally broadened into a lawn overgrown with flowers and vines. Back of it stood an old house that had once been a fine colonial mansion. The house seemed to frown on the intruders, who had come to destroy its sacred quiet.
“I should think anybody might be ‘teched’ in the head, who lived alone in a queer place like this,” whispered Ruth to Bab, as the two girls stood with their arms about each other, staring ahead of them.
“Will you see Miss Thorne first, Jim, and explain our plight to her?” Mr. Stuart asked the old colored man. “Or do you think it would be better to have me make matters clear?”
“I’ll do the ’splainin’, Massa,” returned old Jim. “My missis will allus listen to me. I done tole you she wasn’t jes’ like other folks.”