I respected her misery enough to keep silent, and she made no attempt to converse.  Her hat slid forward at a rakish angle over one ear, and her hair blew about her face in stringy wisps, as the doctor broke the speed laws on the long, level stretches of quiet roads.  When we came to a rough spot she bounced up and down (one might hear her breath exhaled in a—­well, yes, in a grunt) but she made no complaint, uttered no protest.  She was a shackled and voiceless victim, until we finally drew up at her own gate, after an hour’s jaunt, and allowed her to escape.

“Why, Martha, our little spin has given you a fine color!” remarked the doctor, genuinely pleased.  Two conspicuously red spots shone in Miss Hopkins’s cheeks, and her eyes were extremely bright.  “We’ll have to take you out with us again,” he added, genially.

“Shall you, Richard?” muttered Miss Hopkins, and scuttled up her front path,

Like one who in a lonesome wood
Doth walk in fear and dread,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread!

By and large, I should say that the honors were with Alicia.

The Author’s secretary was pacing up and down the garden when we reached home, with Potty Black careering after him and every now and then dashing into the shrubbery to put to flight Beautiful Dog, who was also enamored of the young man with the nice smile and the good brown eyes.  He had a great affection for animals, as they seemed to understand.

Beautiful Dog laid aside, for his sake, his fear of white people, and slunk after him fawningly, wagging what did duty as a tail, and showing every tooth in an ear-to-ear grin.  At sight of us, Beautiful Dog gave a dismal yelp and disappeared.

“Let’s sit in the library,” coaxed the secretary.  “I want you please to allow me to hold in my hands your copy of ’Purchas his Pilgrimes.’  The Author dreams about that book out loud.  Oh, yes, another thing I want to ask you:  what sort of perfume do you use, and where do you get it?”

My scalp prickled.

“I noticed it in the upper hall last night,” went on the secretary, innocently.  “It was pervasive, but at the same time so delicate, so elusive, that I couldn’t determine what it was.  I am very sensitive to perfumes.”

“So are we,” Alicia told him.  “And if what you think you smelled is what we think we smell, it isn’t a—­a regular perfume.  It’s a—­a—­a something that belongs to Hynds House.”

The library was flooded with the ruddy light of sunset.  Every bit of color in the big room stood out against a golden background, and a great golden spear fell across the dark, brooding face of Freeman Hynds above the old tiled fireplace.  In that rosy glow he seemed to look down at us with living eyes.

“Is that so?” The secretary stopped; and his head went up and his nose wrinkled.  For the “something that belonged to Hynds House” walked upon the air with invisible feet.