“Where are you going?” she demanded.
Medenham resolved to end this farce of pretense, else he would not be answerable for the manner of his speech.
“I mean to find Miss Vanrenen,” he said. “Pray let that suffice for the hour. Any further explanation you may require can be given at Bristol and in her presence.”
Mrs. Devar began to sob. He heard her, and of all things that he hated it was to become the cause of a woman’s tears. But his lips closed in a thin seam, and he drove fast to the fork in the roads. Another halt here, and the briefest scrutiny showed that his judgment had not erred. The Du Vallon had passed this point twice. If it came from Bristol in the first instance it had gone now to some unfamiliar wilderness that skirted the whole northeastern slopes of the Mendips.
He leaped back to the driving seat, and Mrs. Devar made one more despairing effort to regain control of a situation that had slipped from her grasp nearly an hour ago.
“Please do be sensible, Fitzroy!” she almost screamed. “Even if he has made a mistake in a turning, Count Marigny will take every care of Miss Vanrenen——”
It was useless. She was appealing to a man of stone, and, indeed, Medenham could not pay heed to her then in any circumstances, for the road surface quickly became very rough, and it needed all his skill to guide his highly-strung car over its inequalities without inflicting an injury that might prove disastrous.
His only consolation was provided by the knowledge that the risk to a stout Mercury was as naught compared with the tortures endured by a French-built racer, with its long wheel-base and low chassis. After a couple of miles of semi-miraculous advance his respect for Smith’s capability as a driver increased literally by leaps and bounds.
But the end was nearer than he thought. On reaching the top of one of those seemingly interminable land-waves, he saw a blurred object in the hollow. Soon he distinguished Cynthia’s fawn-colored dust cloak, and his heart throbbed exultantly when the girl fluttered a handkerchief to show that she, too, had seen.