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 was admirable, the circumstances considered. He did nothing whatever but stand still for a matter of five minutes, vainly racking his memory for a clue to the identity of "Miss Wentworth."

At length he gave it up in despair and abstractedly felt for his watch-fob. Which wasn't there. Neither, investigation developed, was the watch. At which crowning stroke of misfortune,—the timepiece must have slipped from his pocket into the water while he was tinkering with that infamous carbureter,—Maitland turned eloquently red in the face.

"The price," he meditated aloud, with an effort to resume his pose, "is a high one to pay for a wave of a grey glove and the echo of a pretty laugh."

With which final fling at Fortune he set off again for Maitland Manor, trudging heavily but at a round pace through the dust that soon settled upon the damp cloth of his trousers legs and completed their ruination. But Maitland was beyond being disturbed by such trifles. A wounded vanity engaged his solicitude to the exclusion of all other interests.