dy, where he confided to her great news:

"Nicky telephoned me. He brings wonderful news out of America. Big
business he has done. He cannot come yet by our house, for even
servants must not see him here. So you shall go and meet him. You take
your own little car, and go most careful till you find Hyde Park gate.
Inside you stop and get out to see if something is matter with the
engine. A man is there--Nicky. He steps in the car. You get in and
drive slowly--so slowly. Give him this letter--put in bosom of dress
not to lose. He tells you maybe something, and he gives you envelope.
Then he gets out, and you come home--but carefully. Don't let one of
those buses run you over in the fog. I should not risk you if not most
important."

Marie Louise pleaded illness, and fear of never finding the place. But
Sir Joseph stared at her with such wonder and pain that she yielded
hastily, took the envelope, folded it small, thrust it into her chest
pocket and went out to the garage, where she could hardly bully the
chauffeur into letting her take her own car. He put all the curtains
on, and she pushed forth into obfuscation like a one-man submarine.
There was something of the effect of moving along the floor of the
sea. The air was translucent, a little like water-depths, but
everything was a blur.

Luck was with her. She neither ran over nor was run over. But she was
so tardy in finding the gate, and Nicky was so damp, so chilled, and
so uneasy with the apparitions and the voices that had haunted him in
the fog that he said nothing more cordial than:

"At last! So you come!"

He climbed in, shivering with cold or fear. And she ran the car a
little farther into the nebulous depths. She gave him the letter from
Sir Joseph and took from him another.

Nicky did not care to tarry.

"I should get back to my house with this devil's cold I've caught," he
said. "Do you still have no sun in this bedamned England?"

The "you" struck Marie Louise as odd coming from a professed
Englishman, even if he did lay the blame for his accent on years spent
in German banking-houses.

"How did you find the United States?" Marie Louise asked, with a
sudden qualm of homesickness.

"Those United States! Ha! United about what? Money!"

"I think you can get along better afoot," said Marie Louise, as she
made a turn and slipped through the pillars of the gate.

"_Au revoir!_" said Nicky, and he dived out, slamming the door back of
him.

That n