From the strange welter in the amazing world outside there now emerged a large open motor. And royally it drew up before the magic door of Number Five. Two persons were seated in the car. One was no less than Princess Bedalia. The other was the humblest and yet the boldest of her adorers.
III
The idea itself had been Mary's that they should use a fine afternoon in motoring into Laxton, in order to see her parents. Behind this simple plan was fell design. A week had passed since that conversation under the trees in the Park in which she had sought in vain for her release. But so shallow had her reasoning appeared that Jack declined to take it seriously. He had her promise, and he felt he had every right to hold her to it. Unless she could show a real cause for revoking it, he was fully determined not to give her up.
In desperation, therefore, she had hit on the expedient, a poor and vain one, no doubt, of taking him to see those humble people whom she called father and mother. In the course of her twenty odd years up and down the world she had had intimations from various side winds and divers little birds that she was an adopted child. Her real parentage and the circumstances of her birth were an impenetrable mystery and must always be so, no doubt, but her feeling for the Kellys was one of true affection and perfect loyalty. Not by word or deed had she hinted at the possession of knowledge which had come to her from other sources.
In the circumstances of the case she now allowed herself to imagine that a visit to her home people in their
