that would lead
you to believe that, whatever I may have been, I am now in any way
above what I appear to be, with the Wellington livery on my back. I
say this in justice to you. I say it because I am grateful to you.
You may regard it as a warning, if you will."

For a moment she did not reply, sitting rigidly thoughtful, while
Armitage, abandoning all pretence at work, stood watching her.

"Very well," she said at length, and her voice was coldly conventional.
"If you have finished your repairs, will you drive me to Mrs. Van
Valkenberg's? Follow this road through; turn to your left, and I 'll
tell you when to stop."

Sara Van Valkenberg was one of the most popular of the younger matrons
of Newport and New York. As Sara Malalieu, daughter of a prime old
family, Billy Van Valkenberg had discovered her, and their wedding had
been an event from which many good people in her native city dated
things. Van Valkenberg was immensely wealthy and immensely wicked.
Sara had not sounded the black depths of his character when he was
killed in a drunken automobile ride two years before, but she had
learned enough to appreciate the kindness of an intervening fate.

Now she lived in an Elizabethan cottage sequestered among the rocks a
short distance inland from the Ocean Drive. She was very good to look
at, very worldly wise, and very, very popular. She was thirty years
old, an age not to be despised in a woman.

When Miss Wellington's car arrived at the cottage, Tommy Osgood's motor
was in front of the door, which was but a few feet from the road. With
an expression of annoyance, Anne ran up the steps and rang the bell.
The footman was about to take her card when Mrs. Van Valkenberg's voice
sounded from the library.

"Come in, Anne, we saw you coming."

Anne entered the apartment and found her friend reclining in all her
supple ease, watching flushed-face Tommy, who had been attempting to
summon his nerve to tell her how little he cared to continue his course
through the world without her, which was just what she did not wish to
have him do, because Tommy was a manly, likable, unassuming chap and
had much yet to learn, being several years her junior.

"Oh, Tommy," said Anne, "I wanted to speak to Sara alone for a moment."

"Tommy was on his way to the polo field," said Mrs. Van Valkenberg,
suggestively. "Now he need have no further excuse for being civil to
an old lady."

"By George," said Tommy, "that's so, I