But what do you imagine?"

"I don't imagine--I know. He found out, somehow, that she was going with
us, and just dropped things and ran for it."

"Do you think he did that?"

"Of course he did. And if we're not careful the odium of the whole thing
will fall on us."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back from Golden and take Miss
Vennor along with us."

"Wouldn't that be assuming a great deal? You would hardly want to tell
the President that you had brought his daughter back because you were
afraid she might do something rash."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Burton, who was rather out of his element in trying to
pick his way among the social ploughshares.

"But that is what you will have to tell him, if we go back," she
insisted, with delicious effrontery.

Burton thought about it for a moment, and ended by accepting the fact
merely because it was thrust upon him. "I couldn't very well do that,
you know," he objected, and she nearly laughed in his face because he
had fallen so readily into her small trap; "but if we don't break it
off, what shall we do?"

"Do? why, nothing at all! Mr. Vennor asks us to take his daughter with
us on a little pleasure-trip, and he doesn't tell us to bring her back
instanter if we happen to find Fred on the train."

Burton was silenced, but he was very far from being convinced, and he
gave up the return project reluctantly, promising himself that he should
have a very uncomfortable day of it.

In the meantime, the two young people in the observation-car were making
hard work of it. A good many undiscussable happenings had intervened
between their parting and their meeting, and these interfered sadly with
the march of a casual conversation. As usually befalls, it was the young
woman who first rose superior to the embarrassments.

"I'm glad of this day," she said, frankly, when they had exhausted the
scenery, the matchless morning, the crisp air, and half a dozen other
commonplaces. "I enjoyed our trip down from Silver Plume a year ago so
much, and it seemed the height of improbability to imagine that we'd
ever repeat it. Did you think we ever should?"

"No, indeed," replied Brockway, truthfully; "but I have wished many
times that we might. Once in awhile, when I was a boy, I used to get a
day that was all my own--a day in which I could go where I pleased and
do as I liked. Those days are all marked with white stones now, and I
often env