CHAPTER XIX.
ILLUMINATION It was three or four months later when Ida was carried swiftly westward through the London streets toward twelve o'clock one night.
The motor purred and clicked smoothly, slinging bright beams of light in front of it as it twisted eel-like through the traffic.

The glass that would have sheltered Ida from the cool night breeze was down, but she scarcely noticed the roar of the city or the presence of Arabella and Mrs.Kinnaird.
She was thinking of that afternoon at Scarthwaite, and wondering, as she had done somewhat frequently since then, what had impelled her to speak in that impulsive fashion.

It had not been, as she now recognized, merely a desire to justify Clarence Weston in the eyes of his English relatives, for she had felt reasonably sure that this was a thing beyond accomplishment while he remained a railroad-hand or a bush chopper.

The other explanation was that she had spoken to reassure herself; but that, as she would have admitted, seemed scarcely necessary, for in this respect he did not need an advocate.
There was the third alternative, that the attitude of Weston and his daughter toward the absent man had fanned her dislike of shams into a blaze of downright rage, and that she had merely ridden a somewhat reckless tilt against her pet aversions.
One thing, at least, was certain.

Weston had not called on her, to ask for any further information about his son; and, for that matter, she would have been astonished had he done so.