Several times, she caught herself laughing softly at the recollection of how she had triumphed over the daring young ranchman, and at the predicament in which she had left him, standing there near the bridge, in a locality that was entirely unknown to him, from which he must have some difficulty in finding his way to a place where he could secure another conveyance. He might know what it meant to be left horseless on the ranges of the West, but this would be a new and a strange—perhaps a wholesome—experience for him.
Presently, she came to the turn of the road that would bring her upon the main highway; and here she stopped the car, and got down from it, long enough to light the lamps. This done, she went on again, as swiftly as she dared, yet not too rapidly, because now she felt that she was as free as the air singing past her. The highway she traversed was almost as familiar to her as the streets of New York City.
The exhilaration she had experienced when she triumphed over Richard Morton and escaped from him, increased rather than diminished as she sped onward, and when, almost an hour later, she guided the car between the huge gate-posts which admitted it to the grounds of Cedarcrest, and followed the winding driveway toward the entrance to the stone mansion, she was altogether a different Patricia Langdon from the one who had started out, in company with the young Westerner, shortly after five o'clock that afternoon.
She brought the car to a stop under the porte-cochère, and announced her arrival by several loud blasts of the automobile-horn; a moment later, the doors were thrown open, and Sally Gardner rushed out to receive her.
"I am afraid I am late, Sally," Patricia called out, in a voice that was wholly unlike her usual calm tones. "Will you call someone to care for the car?" Without waiting for a reply, she sprang from beneath the wheel, and with a light laugh returned the impetuous embrace with which the young matron greeted her.
In some mysterious manner, word had already been passed to the guests that Patricia Langdon had arrived in Richard Morton's car, but alone; and so, by the time Patricia had released herself from Sally's clinging arms, Roderick Duncan, followed by the others of the party, appeared in the open doorway. Duncan came forward swiftly, but his host forestalled him in putting the question he would have asked.
"I say, Patricia!" Jack Gardner called out. "What have you done with Morton? Where is Dick?"
"Really, Jack, I don't know," replied Patricia, standing quite still, with her right arm around Sally's shoulders, and lifting her head like a thoroughbred filly. Mrs. Gardner's left arm still clung around her waist. "Mr. Morton is back there, somewhere, on the road. If he doesn't change his plans, he should arrive here, presently." She laughed, as she replied to the question, perceiving, at the moment, only the humorous side of it. She was still under the influence of that swift ride alone; still delighted by the thought of the predicament in which she had left her escort, because of his outrageous conduct toward her.
"Did you meet with an accident? Has anything happened to Mr. Morton?" inquired Agnes Houston.
Patricia shrugged her shoulders, and, again laughing softly, withdrew from Sally's embrace and began to ascend the steps. One of the Cedarcrest servants appeared at that moment, to take the car around to the garage; and for some reason each member of the party stepped aside, one way or another, so that Miss Langdon was the one who led the way into the house, the others falling in behind her, and following. The circumstance of her arrival in such a manner and the suggestion of mystery conveyed in Patricia's answer to Jack Gardner's question convinced all that something had happened which needed an explanation. Patricia's demeanor was so different from her usual half-haughty bearing, that it was, in a way, a revelation to them all. Each one there had his or her own conception of the occasion, and probably no two opinions were the same; but at least they were all agreed on one point: that there had been a scene somewhere, and that Richard Morton had got the worst of it.