the same experience as Honora!

She was always going to take the train, and didn't. Whenever her mind was
irrevocably made up, the automobile whirled away on all four cylinders
for a half a mile or so, until they were out of reach of the railroad.
There were trolley cars, to be sure, but those took forever to get
anywhere. Four o'clock struck, five and six, when at last the fiend who
had conspired with fate, having accomplished his evident purpose of
compelling Honora to miss her dinner, finally abandoned them as suddenly
and mysteriously as he had come, and the automobile was a lamb once more.
It was half-past six, and the sun had set, before they saw the lights
twinkling all yellow on the heights of Fort George. At that hour the last
train they could have taken to reach the dinner-party in time was leaving
the New York side of the ferry.

"What will they think?" cried Honora. "They saw us leave Delmonico's at
two o'clock, and they didn't know we were going to Westchester."

It needed no very vivid imagination to summon up the probable remarks of
Mrs. Chandos on the affair. It was all very well to say the motor broke
down; but unfortunately Trixton Brent's reputation was not much better
than that of his car.

Trixton Brent, as might have been expected, was inclined to treat the
matter as a joke.

"There's nothing very formal about a Quicksands dinner-party," he said.
"We'll have a cosey little dinner in town, and call 'em up on the
telephone."