Had the spirit of Rosemary truly been with them, she must surely have been asking herself, “Why is Danby Force here? What does he expect to find at the lodge? Did he take the dark lady’s traveling bag? Is it hidden there? Will he find it? And if he does, what will he take from it? ‘Valuable papers’ were the dark lady’s words. Were there such papers? There is some relation between this fine-appearing young man and that lady. What can it be?” So the spirit of Rosemary Sample might have spoken to itself had it followed down the mountainside. But the spirit of Rosemary Sample was not there. Rosemary Sample, body, soul and spirit, was in the trans-continental plane speeding on toward Chicago. And beside her, now talking loudly and boastfully of his dangerous exploits as an amateur aviator, and now speaking in kindly and gentle tones of his mother, was young Willie VanGeldt.
“I should not care for him at all,” Rosemary told herself. Yet there was something about him, his light and good-natured views of life, his smile perhaps, something about him that claimed her interest.
“As if the stars had willed that for a time our lives should run together, like trains on parallel tracks,” she whispered to herself. Little did she guess the part that this youth with his wealth and his reckless ways would play in her life, nor that which she would play in his.
In the meantime Jeanne, Danby Force and their gypsy companions were wending their way down the trail that led to the hunting lodge.
“I shan’t detain you long,” Danby Force was saying to Jeanne. “It’s just a little thing I want to look into up here.”
Jeanne, whose curiosity had not as yet been aroused, scarcely heard him. She was awed and charmed by the grandeur and beauty of the mountains. To look up two thousand feet to the snow-clad rocks that were the mountain peaks, then to look down quite as far to the tree-grown canyons far below—ah that was grand!
When at last they came in sight of the rustic lodge, flanked as it was by massive rocks and half covered by overhanging boughs of evergreens, she stopped in her tracks to stand there lost in admiration.
“Ah!” she murmured, “What a grand solitude is here! Who would not wish to return many, many times!”
She was soon enough to learn that it was not solitude the interesting young man, Danby Force, sought. For, contrary to Rosemary Sample’s suspicion, he had not hidden the dark lady’s traveling bag. He had returned to seek it. How did he hope to succeed when, on that other occasion, all others had failed? Well may one ask. Yet Danby Force did not lack for hope. He believed in a kind Providence that sometimes guides an honest soul in its search for hidden things. With the aid of this Providence he might succeed where others had failed.