She took a last look at Rock Creek Park, henceforth her private game-preserve. As she stared, an idea came to her. She needed one. The park, it occurred to her, was an excellent wilderness to get lost in––with Ross Davidge.
She was late to her meeting with Davidge––not unintentionally. He was waiting on the steps of the hotel, smoking, when she drove up in the car she had bought for her Motor Corps work.
He said what she hoped he would say:
“I didn’t know you drove so well.”
She quoted a popular phrase: “‘You don’t know the half of it, dearie.’ Hop in, and I’ll show you.”
He thought of Lady Clifton-Wyatt, and Marie Louise knew he thought of her. But he was not hero or coward enough to tell a woman that he had an engagement with another woman. She pretended to have forgotten that he had told her, though she could think of little else. She whisked round the corner of I Street, or Eye Street, and thence up Sixteenth Street, fast and far.
She was amazed at her own audacity, and Davidge could not make her out. She had a scared look that puzzled him. She was really thinking that she was the most unconscionable kidnapper that ever ran off with some other body’s child. He could hardly dun her for the money, and she had apparently forgotten it again.
They were well to the north when she said:
“Do you know Rock Creek Park?”