follow the group into the house; instead, he took the car and Jack Rupert around to the garage.

A little later, when Flavia Rose went upstairs to make ready for dinner, Isabel followed her, frankly inquisitive.

"Is this Mr. Gerard the real Gerard, the Gerard who races cars?" the examination commenced, as soon as the cousins were alone.

"He is Allan Gerard," Flavia stated. "Did you have a nice game, this afternoon?"

The distraction was put aside.

"Oh, pretty fair. I walked home across the links and left the runabout at the club. Did you ever meet Mr. Gerard before? You seem to know each other pretty well."

Flavia's delicate color flushed over her face; for an instant she again felt Gerard's firm arm around her and encountered his concerned eyes bent upon her own, as they stood on the stairs of the grand-stand. Truthfulness was the atmosphere of the household, the truthfulness born of fearless affection and cordial sympathy of feeling, but now she used an evasion, almost for the first time in her life.

"It is Corrie who knows Mr. Gerard, Isabel," she explained, a trifle slowly. "You remember that race when he helped Corrie, last summer? To-day Corrie saw him playing ball, and brought him to meet us."

"Oh! Yes, I remember the race, of course; I was there. But I did not know Allan Gerard was—well, looked like that. How long will he be here?"

"Papa and Corrie asked him to stay until the Cup race is over."

There was a pause. Isabel walked over to one of the long mirrors and studied her own vigorously handsome image, then turned her head and regarded Flavia with the perfect complacency and mischievous malice of a young kitten.

"Good sport," she anticipated.

Flavia carefully laid her brush upon the dressing table and proceeded to gather into a coil the shimmering mass of her fair hair. Suddenly she was afraid, quiveringly afraid of herself, of Gerard and the next two weeks, but most afraid of showing any change in expression to Isabel's sharp scrutiny.

III

THE HOUSEHOLD OF ROSES

"If there is one thing meaner than another, it's rain," Corrie announced generally. "I'm going out. Won't you come, Gerard?"

"If rain is the meanest thing there is, it shows real sense to go out in it," Isabel commented, from the window-seat opposite. "That is just like you, Corrie Rose. When I ask you to take me out on a perfectly fair day, you won't do it."

"I?" stunned. "I ever refused——"

"Yes. Yesterday, when I asked you to take me just once around the race course, while the cars were out practising. You know you would not. If it is safe for you, it is safe for me. But never mind; your old pink car won't win, anyhow. He hasn't a chance with the professional drivers, has he, Mr. Gerard?"

"A chance?" Gerard gravely echoed. "Why, several of our best drivers are thinking of withdrawing, since he is entered, because they feel it's no use trying to win if he is racing."

"Oh, you're making fun! But I mean it; I could race that car he is so vain of, with my own little runabout machine."

Corrie dragged a mandolin from beneath his chair and tinkled the opening chords of a popular melody.