"Why, Warren," exclaimed Mr. Stuart, "I had no idea that you were in this part of the world. The last time I saw you, you were ranching out in Idaho."
"Quite true," replied Mr. Warren, smiling, "but that was ten years ago. A great many things have happened since then." He sighed and looked out over the blue lake. "Mrs. Warren died the next year," he said slowly. "Maud and I are alone."
"I am deeply sorry to hear of your great loss," sympathized Mr. Stuart and his fine face saddened. He too had known that loss.
Turning to Maud who had been exchanging rather distant greetings with the four girls, he said pleasantly. "So this is Maud. She was a little girl in short dresses when last I saw her. How these children do grow up."
Maud smiled frigidly and for the fraction of a second allowed her hand to touch that of Mr. Stuart. "One must grow up some time, you know," she murmured.
"I should like to stay eighteen forever," exclaimed Ruth, with enthusiasm.
"Would you indeed?" remarked Maud Warren, raising her eyebrows. "How odd!"
There was a brief silence. The four girls stared straight ahead and tried to control their desire to laugh. During their stay at Lenox the year before the circumstances of which having been fully told in the "Automobile Girls in the Berkshires," they had not been impressed with Maud Warren, on account of her disagreeable and overbearing manner. But the blasé air that she now affected, was in their candid eyes extremely ridiculous, and her remark to Ruth had filled them all with unseemly mirth.
Maud Warren, however, serenely unconscious of what was passing through their minds, sank into a wicker chair, and deliberately turning her back upon the "Automobile Girls," began a conversation with Miss Sallie.
The "Automobile Girls" dated their organization back to almost two years before, when Barbara Thurston had bravely stopped a runaway team of horses driven by Ruth Stuart, a rich western girl, summering in Kingsbridge, the home town of the Thurstons.
A warm friendship had sprung up between Ruth Stuart, Barbara and Mollie Thurston, that resulted in a journey to Newport in Ruth's red motor car, familiarly known as Mr. A. Bubble. Grace Carter, a Kingsbridge girl, had been asked to complete the quartette of adventurous damsels, while Miss Sallie Stuart, Ruth's aunt had gone along as chaperon.