"You, miss?" Maria's loyalty rose in wrathful protest. "And who should have good things if 'tisn't you, I'd like to know? 'Twouldn't be fitting for any Miss Lovell of Lovell Court to have things that wasn't of the very best. And as to telling up little old tales—there'll be no tales told about you, nor Mr. Robin neither, so long as I'm in Silverquay. I'll see to that!"

Thoroughly devoted, illogical, and belligerent, Maria picked up the coffee tray and stalked out of the room, leaving Ann and Robin convulsed with laughter.



CHAPTER XI

THE LADY FROM THE PRIORY

Bang! The noise of the explosion reverberated through the clear summer air, and Ann, returning home from the village by way of a short cut through the woods, smiled to herself as she heard it. She knew that sound—the staccato percussion of a burst tyre—only too well.

The main road ran parallel with the woods, and, impelled by a friendly curiosity to know if she could be of any help, she branched off at right angles and turned her steps in its direction. As she approached she could discern between the tree-trunks a car, slewed round half across the road, and the figure of a woman standing beside it and bending over one of the wheels. Her very attitude betokened a certain helplessness and inexperience, and, seeing that she was alone, Ann quickened her pace.

"Can I help you at all?" she volunteered, as she reached the roadside.

The woman straightened herself.

"Oh, if you would!" she exclaimed, with obvious relief. "My tyre's burst, and I'm ashamed to confess I haven't the faintest idea what to do."

Ann regarded her with interest. She was past her first girlhood, a woman of about thirty, and unusually beautiful. Even more beautiful now, perhaps, than she had been in earlier days, since, in taking the first freshness and bloom of youth, the years had given in exchange an arresting quality which is only born of suffering and experience—adding a deeper depth to her eyes, a certain strength of endurance to the exquisitely moulded mouth. Silky dark hair curved back beneath her close-fitting hat like a raven's wing, sheathing her small, fine head. There was the same silky darkness, too, of brow and lashes, and when she lifted her long-fringed lids they revealed a pair of sad and very lovely eyes, the colour of a purple pansy.

"It was foolish of me to come out alone," she pursued, as Ann proceeded in a business-like fashion to investigate the damage. "I've learned how to drive, but I know nothing at all about repairs, or tow to put on a new tyre or stepney or anything."

"Well, the first thing to do is to pull the car out of the middle of the road," returned Ann practically. "Then we'll have to jack her up."

A couple of labourers, passing at the moment, lent a hand in pulling the car to one side, and when this was accomplished Ann made a raid on the tool box.

"No, no," the owner of the car protested quickly. "I can't think of letting you do anything more. Even if you put things right," she added, smiling, "I shouldn't have the nerve to drive back. The car spun half round when the tyre burst, and nearly frightened me to death."

"In any case, I'm afraid there's nothing that I can do," replied Ann, emerging from her investigations. "You've come out without a jack on board!"

The other, detecting the amused gleam in her eyes, laughed rather ruefully.

"I dare say I've come out without anything I ought to have!" she admitted. "My chauffeur was sent for hurriedly to the death-bed of his wife's aunt or some one, and I just thought I'd come out for a spin this afternoon and explore the neighbourhood. I never prepared for accidents! I shall have to walk home, that's all."

"Have you far to go?"

"I live at the Priory. I've only recently arrived there—hence my thirst for exploration"—smiling.

"Then you must be Mrs. Hilyard." Ann felt she had known it all the time.

"Yes"—pleasantly. "I'm Mrs. Hilyard. Are you one of my new neighbours?"

"A very new one," confessed Ann. "I believe I arrived the same day that you did. I'm Ann Lovell."

Apparently the name Lovell conveyed nothing to Mrs. Hilyard. Probably she possessed no equivalent of Maria, who was almost as full of current news as the local daily paper.

"Well, I'm very grateful to you for coming to my help. My chauffeur gets back this evening, and I'll send him down for the car. It will be all right here till then."

She bowed very graciously, and was turning away when Ann impulsively detained her.

"Don't walk back," she said. "Let me drive you home in my cart. Our cottage is close by, and if you'd let us give you some tea first—"

"Now, that's what I call being really neighbourly!" declared Mrs. Hilyard. "I'd love the cup of tea. But I can't put you to the trouble of driving me back afterwards. There must be a limit to Good Samaritanism, you know!"

"It won't be the least trouble," Ann assured her. "Rather the reverse, in fact. My cob wasn't out yesterday, and it'll do him good to go out to-day. So, you see, you're providing an excellent reason for exercising him"—laughingly.

Mrs. Hilyard threw her a mischievous smile.

"Pure casuistry!" she affirmed. "But it's convinced me. I'll love to have tea with you, and afterwards you shall drive me home, and by the time I've given you as much trouble as possible, I hope we shall be really friends!"

It was only a matter of five minutes' walk from where they were standing to the Cottage, and Mrs. Hilyard exclaimed with delight at its pretty, old-fashioned aspect.

"What a delicious place!" she commented, as Ann established her in an easy chair. "I think I like it better than my Priory. You've some lovely bits of pewter up there"—nodding towards the tall old chimney-piece, where the tender moon-grey of ancient pewter mugs and dishes gleamed fitfully against the panelled wall.

"I'm afraid it isn't ours," acknowledged Ann regretfully. "Though I love every bit of it. My brother is agent for the Heronsmere estate, and we have this cottage furnished. Oh, here he is," she added, as Robin entered the room.

She introduced him to Mrs. Hilyard, who smilingly accounted for her impromptu visit.

"I feel that I'm imposing on Miss Lovell's good-nature in the most barefaced fashion," she said apologetically. "But I honestly couldn't resist the suggestion of a cup of tea."

"I'm very glad you couldn't," replied Robin simply. And something in the tone of his voice, taken in conjunction with the serious directness of his regard, made of the short sentence more than a mere empty expression of politeness.

"I met Brian Tempest and his sister just now," he went on, turning to Ann, "and asked them to come in to tea, so I expect they'll be here directly."

"Tempest? That's the rector here, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Hilyard, as Ann slipped out of the room to prepare Maria for the expected "company."

Robin nodded.

"You've not met him yet?"

"I've met no one. So far, I've done nothing but wrestle with packing-cases and the distribution of furniture"—smiling.

"It sounds pretty ghastly," averred Robin. "I say"—impulsively. "Couldn't I—couldn't we help you at all?"

Mrs. Hilyard laughed softly. Robin thought it was one of the most delightful sounds he had ever heard, fluent and sweet as the pipe of a blackbird.

"Apparently you and your sister go about doing kindnesses," she said, in a quick, touched way. "The very first thing she said to me was 'Can I help?' And now, almost your first utterance is another offer of help! Is every one in the neighbourhood like that? Because, if so, I think I must have come to an enchanted village—and"—firmly—"I shall decide to remain here for the rest of my life!"

"Well"—Robin looked embarrassed—"shifting furniture about isn't exactly a woman's job."

"I'm not actually shifting furniture myself—except a table or chair now and again, when no one else moves quickly enough to please me! But if you and Miss Lovell would come over one day soon and help me to decide about the disposition of my lares and penates, it would be the greatest help. One does so want some one to talk things over with, you know," she added.

To Robin's ears there was a forlorn note in that frank little acknowledgment, and he was conscious of a sudden, overpowering rush of sympathy. She was lonely—he was sure of it. In spite of all her charm and quick laughter, she was not a happy woman. Some shadow from the past lay in her eyes, and when she laughed the sparkle in them was like the momentary sunlit ripple which breaks the surface of a pool for a brief instant and then is lost again in its shadowed stillness.

Ann's return to the room, synchronising with the arrival of the rector and his sister, served to detach his thoughts from the subject of Mrs. Hilyard's eyes, and when the necessary introductions had been performed, and the new owner of the Priory was joining in the general conversation with apparent light-heartedness, Robin was tempted to wonder whether he had been correct in his surmise, after all.

But later on, during tea, the clouded expression reappeared on her face, as though something had all at once turned her thoughts inward. It was when Miss Caroline, thirsting for information as usual, suddenly pounced on her with a question.

"I suppose you haven't met Mr. Coventry yet?" she demanded.

For an instant Mrs. Hilyard looked startled. Then she shook her head.

"Mr. Coventry? No. Is he an important person in the neighbourhood?"

"He's my chief," volunteered Robin. "Heronsmere Belongs to him."

"I'm afraid I don't even know where Heronsmere is," submitted Mrs. Hilyard deprecatingly. "I'm quite ignorant about my neighbours, so far."

"Silverquay is part of the Heronsmere property," responded Miss Caroline. "But the house itself is not far from the Priory. The Coventrys have lived there for generations," she added proudly. "They're immensely wealthy."

With the last words an expression of something that looked like relief flitted across Mrs. Hilyard's face.

"How interesting!" she said, infusing just the right amount of cordiality into her voice. "And are there any children? I'm fond of kiddies."

"Children? Oh, no. Mr. Coventry isn't married. Nor was the last owner." Miss Caroline warmed to her subject. "It's funny there should be two bachelor owners in succession, isn't it? Rackham Coventry died unmarried, and both his younger brothers were killed—one at sea and the other in a railway accident. That's how it was the property came to Eliot Coventry, who's only a cousin."

Mrs. Hilyard suddenly went very white. Fortunately, Miss Caroline's attention happened to be concentrated at the moment upon stirring the sugar into her second cup of tea, and by the time this was satisfactorily accomplished, the pretty colour was stealing back into the cheeks that had paled so swiftly.

"I'd really no idea there were any other houses at all near mine," murmured Mrs. Hilyard, after the briefest of pauses. "I came across an advertisement of the Priory, dashed down to see it one day, and fell in love with it on the spot—partly because it seemed so far from everywhere."

"We value our privacy in Silverquay," said the rector, smiling. "Almost all the large houses are tucked snugly away out of sight—hidden by trees or rising ground."

"Did you come here to be quiet, then?" asked Miss Caroline, thrusting in her oar the instant her brother had finished speaking.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Hilyard simply.

Miss Caroline fixed her with a gimlet eye.

"How very surprising!" she remarked. "You don't look in the least like the sort of person who would choose to live in a quiet country village like Silverquay."

"Don't I?" Mrs. Hilyard smiled. But she did not volunteer any explanation of her choice.

Here Ann, recognising Miss Caroline's now familiar methods of cross-examination, came to the rescue and diverted the conversation into a less personal channel, and shortly afterwards the Tempests left in order to pay some parochial visits in the village, Ann shepherding them as far as the gateway.

Mrs. Hilyard exchanged a sympathetic smile with Robin. "The Miss Carolines of the world are rather trying, aren't they?" she observed mirthfully. "I think she has gone away fully convinced that there is something 'queer' about me—that I'm not quite respectable, probably!"

"Ridiculous!" growled Robin in tones of wrath. "She has only to look at you!"

"Thank you"—meekly. "I'm glad you think I look—respectable."

"You know I didn't mean that! I think you look—I think you look—" He floundered and broke off abruptly.

"Yes?" There was the tiniest rising inflection in her voice, demanding an answer.

Across the little room Robin's eyes laughed into hers.

"Perhaps I'll tell you some other time—when I know you better," he said.

At that moment Ann returned from speeding the Tempests on their way. Mrs. Hilyard rose.

"I must be going, too, I think," she said. "But I don't want you to trouble about driving me back, Miss Lovell. I'll walk."

"It's no trouble at all," Ann assured her. "Tell Billy to bring the cart round, will you, Robin?"

He nodded, and held out his hand to Mrs. Hilyard.

"Good-bye," he said. "I'd ask you to let me drive you back, but that I've made an appointment to see one of Mr. Coventry's tenants."

A few minutes later Dick Turpin, somewhat annoyed at being taken out of his stall just as feeding-time approached, was bearing Ann and her new acquaintance swiftly along the road towards the Priory.

Mrs. Hilyard was very silent during the first part of the drive. She appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, and from the expression of her face one might have hazarded a guess that she was inwardly debating some moot point. All at once she seemed to come to a decision.

"I think," she said in a quiet, clear voice, "that I must have met this Mr. Coventry who lives at Heronsmere. I knew an Eliot Coventry—once."

She did not look at Ann as she spoke, but gazed straight ahead as though the strip of bare, lonely road which stretched in front of them were of peculiarly vital interest.

"What—is he like?" she went on. Any one observing her at the moment would have gathered the impression that she was forcing herself to speak with composure—that it was not easy for her. But Ann, preoccupied with Dick Turpin's vagaries, was not looking at her.

"Oh, he's tall," she made answer. "And has grey eyes. There's a little white scar just under one of them."

The woman beside her drew a quick breath.

"Ah"—the sweet, trainante voice was a fraction uneven. "Then it is the man I've met."

The ralli-cart swung round a corner into a narrow lane, and a quick exclamation broke from Ann as she recognised in the tall, striding figure approaching from the opposite direction the man of whom they had just been speaking. A beautiful thoroughbred collie bounded along beside him, looking up at his master every now and again with adoring eyes.

"Why, here is Mr. Coventry!" she exclaimed. "Shall I pull up?"

Without waiting for an answer she brought the cob to a standstill exactly as Eliot, catching sight of them, halted instinctively.

"Good afternoon," she called out gaily, as he lifted his hat. "We were just speaking of you. Here is an old acquaintance of yours."

Eliot's glance travelled swiftly from her face to that of her companion. His expression was quite impenetrable—mask-like in its impassivity. Mrs. Hilyard bent forward, holding out her hand.

"Have you forgotten me, Mr. Coventry?"

For an instant the man and woman looked deep into each other's eyes, as though to bridge the time which had passed since last they met—questioning what the intervening years had brought to each of them. But Eliot made no attempt to take the outheld hand. He did not appear to see it, and Mrs. Hilyard let it drop slowly down again on to her lap.

"Forgotten Cara Daintree?" he said lightly. "Is it likely I should?"

"Cara Hilyard, now." She corrected him a shade nervously.

"Oh, yes. Hilyard, isn't it? Of course."

His glance flashed over her face, searching and cold as a hawk's. She winced under it, but faced him gallantly, though a flush crept up under her clear skin.

"I hear we are near neighbours. I hope"—she forced herself to meet those hard, unflinching eyes—"I hope you will come and see me, Mr. Coventry."

He bowed stiffly.

"Thanks," was all he said. Then, laying his hand on the cob's shining flank, he deliberately addressed himself to Ann: "Is Dick Turpin still behaving himself properly?"

She nodded.

"He's a perfect cherub," she assured him warmly. "Any one could manage him—even when he has an attack of high spirits. He's got a mouth like velvet."

"There's something to be said for the driver's hands, possibly," suggested Coventry, with a smile. "Light hands make a light mouth. Still, I'm glad to know he suits you."

He whistled up his dog, who came racing to heel, then, with a grave bow which briefly included Mrs. Hilyard, lifted his hat and resumed his way along the lane.

Ann drove on, and ten minutes later pulled her horse up at the Priory doors. Mrs. Hilyard stepped lightly out of the trap. She moved beautifully, with a deer-like ease and grace.

"Now when will you and your brother come over to lunch?" she asked, as she shook hands. "He promised—for you both—to come and help me with advice about arranging my rooms. You must go on as you've begun—being neighbourly, you know," she added quaintly.

"But we shall be cut out now by an older friend," said Ann, when they had fixed a day for the lunch appointment.

"Oh, no"—quickly. "No man can take the place of a woman friend—and I hope you're going to be that?"

Ann smiled down into the lovely upraised face with frank comradeship.

"I hope so, too," she returned heartily. "Still, it's jolly for you finding an old friend like Mr. Coventry living next door, so to speak, isn't it?"

For a moment Mrs. Hilyard hesitated. Then:

"Very jolly," she replied, with a brief, enigmatic smile.



CHAPTER XII

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

August had come in on a wave of such breathless heat that each day the weather-wise foretold a thunderstorm. But, although the heavy, sultry air and lowering skies seemed pregnant with impending tempest, with every evening would come a clearer atmosphere and all signs of thunder disappear until the following day, when the stifling heat closed down once more like an invisible pall.

The pleasantest spot in the vicinity of Oldstone Cottage was undoubtedly a certain corner of the garden where stood a venerable oak whose interlacing branches spread themselves into a cool green canopy, and here, in a hammock slung from one great limb of the tree to another, Ann had taken refuge. A book lay open on her knee, but, yielding to the languor induced by the oppressive heat, she had ceased to make even a pretence at reading and leaned back in the hammock, hands clasped behind her head, idly reviewing the happenings of the last few weeks.

The realisation that actually no more than a month had elapsed since her arrival at Silverquay amazed her. It seemed almost incredible, so swiftly and surely had the new life built itself up round her, with quick, deft touches—a friend here, an adopted custom there, new interests and occupations that had already become an accepted part of the day's routine.

Ann was the last person in the world to recognise how much of this was due to her own individual personality. That eager vitality of hers went half-way to meet life. She did not wait supinely for things to happen, but instinctively looked round to see what she could herself accomplish. As she had laughingly told Eliot Coventry, she was not in the least an idle person—and the newly-wired chicken-run and hen-coops already established in a corner of a field adjoining the Cottage garden testified to the veracity of the statement. It was a small thing, perhaps, but its prompt achievement was characteristic.

Equally characteristic were the new friendships she was forming. Where some people would find only neighbours, Ann's spontaneous, warm-hearted nature discovered friends. Brian Tempest already counted as one, and her acquaintance with Cara Hilyard, begun so unconventionally, was rapidly deepening into a pleasant intimacy.

She had discarded her original theory that some long-ago romance linked Eliot Coventry and Mrs. Hilyard together. Neither of them appeared to her to be in the least thrilled by the fact of the other's proximity in the neighbourhood, nor did either make any obvious effort to avoid or cultivate the other's society. If they chanced to meet they exchanged civilities as the merest acquaintances might do, and gradually Ann came to believe that their knowledge of each other was based on nothing more profound than a slight friendship of many years ago, which had more or less petered out with the passage of time.

Cara, for all her quick sympathy and eager friendship, was reticent as regards the past, and Ann's attitude towards her held an element of that loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires in one considerably younger than herself—a devotion which accepts things as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets of the past.

One circumstance of Cara's former life had come to Ann's knowledge unavoidably—the fact that her husband, Dene Hilyard, had ill-treated her. A most trifling accident had served to reveal it. She and Ann had been gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola, Cara's thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a trickle of blood where the nail's sharp point had scored the skin, and above that, marring the whiteness of the upper arm, an ugly, discoloured scar. Cara made a hasty movement to conceal it, catching the gaping edges of the sleeve together with her hand. Then, realising that it was too late, she let them fall apart again and met Ann's horrified eyes with a long, inscrutable gaze.

"Yes, it's ugly, isn't it?" she said bitterly. "All my married life was—ugly."

"What do you mean?" Ann's voice shook. She felt as though she knew what was coming—the story of how Cara came by that dreadful scar—and fought against the knowledge with incredulous horror.

"Dene... my husband... he'd been reading a book which described how they branded a woman... and he tried..." She broke off, shivering violently.

"No—no!" Urgently the denial sprang from Ann's stricken lips, as though she sought by the sheer imperative violence of her disclaimer to make this horrible thing untrue.

Cara nodded her head slowly.

"It's quite true... he used to drink... he was half mad at times. That was one of them."

She had never again referred to the matter, nor to any other episode of her unhappy married life, but since that day Ann had always the consciousness of something unspeakably hideous which had lain in the background of Cara Hilyard's life, marring it utterly, and the intense sympathy it aroused within her had quickened the growth of the friendship between them.

One circumstance which had assisted greatly in the "settling down" process, as far as Ann was concerned, had been Lady Susan's unexpectedly early return from Paris. The end of the first fortnight of July had found her back at White Windows.

"The heat was intolerable, my dear!" she told Ann. "And the dust. Not even for the sake of a new rig-out could I endure it. I thought of cool little Silverquay with the nice clean sea washing its doorstep every morning—and I bolted. Madame Antoinette has probably been, wringing her hands over my half-completed garments ever since!"

She was immensely entertained when Ann acquainted her with the identity of the man who had come to her assistance on the night of the Venetian fete, and chuckled enjoyably.

"Poor man! He must be frightfully bored at finding you here—established on his very threshold, so to speak! Confirmed misogynists should never indulge in the rescuing stunt—it's so liable to involve them in unexpected consequences. How does he bear up under the discovery?"

"Not at all well," acknowledged Ann ruefully. "Sometimes I think he almost regrets he didn't let me drown comfortably in the lake while he had the chance!"

The wish she had expressed to Maria concerning her brother's then unknown employer—that she hoped he wouldn't make a habit of dropping in at the Cottage during the mornings—had certainly been very literally fulfilled. Rarely did Eliot Coventry put in an appearance at Oldstone Cottage at all, and if the exigencies of business matters took him there on any occasion when Robin chanced to be out, he usually contrived only to leave a note or message for him with Maria. More often than not, however, he would merely send word to him, asking him to come up and see him at Heronsmere. To Ann, puzzled and secretly somewhat piqued, it seemed as though he were studiously avoiding her. Once she mentioned the subject to Robin, introducing it casually into the conversation as though it were a matter of no moment—as is the way of women in regard to anything which touches them closely. Robin had dismissed it easily.

"Oh, you mustn't think anything of that," he assured her. "I told you—women don't enter much into Coventry's life. He's a bit of a recluse as far as your sex is concerned."

"He was quite friendly that first morning he came here," objected Ann.

It was that which puzzled her—the apparently causeless change in his attitude. It was true that upon, first recognising in his agent's sister the girl he had rescued from her difficulties on the night of the Fete des Narcisses he had appeared disconcerted and by no means pleased to renew the acquaintance. But afterwards he had thawed considerably, and had even suggested that they should be friends. And now he was behaving as though he had repented the suggestion and were determined to show her that he had. It was not that he was a snob. She was absolutely certain that the fact that the unknown heroine of the lake episode had proved to be merely the sister of his estate agent would not have the most fractional weight with Eliot Coventry. And as she sat swinging idly in the hammock, letting her thoughts stray back over her few brief meetings with him, she felt utterly baffled to interpret his behaviour.

Rather irritably she tried to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, but it persisted in occupying the foreground of her mind, and at last, in desperation, she picked up her discarded book and began to read. For a few moments she succeeded in concentrating her attention. Then gradually, as the sunlight, piercing through the branches overhead, flickered dazzlingly on the surface of the paper, the black and white of the printed page ran together in a blur of grey and her eyes closed drowsily. With an effort she forced them open, although lifting her eyelids seemed like raising leaden shutters.

"The rain was now coming down in torrents" was the first sentence which met her glance. She read the phrase over two or three times as though it were some abstruse statement in mathematics. Its incongruousness annoyed her. It was nonsense for any one to write like that. Why, it was so hot... so hot that... The book, falling from her hand, slipped over the side of the hammock and dropped almost soundlessly on to the thick turf below.

The next thing of which she was conscious was of waking suddenly to the sound of a crisp masculine voice remarking succinctly and on a note of intense astonishment:

"Well, I'm hanged!"

Ann stirred and rather unwillingly opened her eyes to find herself gazing straight up into other eyes so vividly blue as to be almost startling. They were looking down at her with a mixture of amusement and unmistakable admiration.

"I've been asleep," she said unnecessarily, still hardly thoroughly awake.

"You have," agreed the owner of the blue eyes. "And I very nearly took the usual privilege accorded to the prince who's told off to waken the sleeping beauty."

At that Arm woke up very completely. The speech savoured of impertinence, and she resented it accordingly, yet it had been so gaily uttered, with a sort of confiding audacity which appeared to take it for granted that she would not be offended, that she found it difficult to feel as righteously indignant as the occasion merited.

"Who are you?" she demanded, sitting up hastily and eyeing the intruder with extreme disfavour. He was hatless, and the sun glinted on dark red locks of the same warm, burnished hue as the skin of a horse-chestnut. The intensely blue eyes gleamed at her from under dominant, strongly-marked brows, and the beaky, high-bridged nose, long-lipped mouth, and stubborn chin all connoted the same arrogant virility.

"I'm Forrester—Brett Forrester, and very much at your service," he replied cheerfully.

So this was Lady Susan's "scapegrace nephew"! This gay, confident person who strode forcefully into your garden without so much as a "by-your-leave," and who conveyed the impression that he would stride forcefully into your life, equally without permission, if it so pleased him. Ann was aware of something extraordinarily vital about the man that attracted her in spite of her first instinctive feeling of aversion.

"And what are you doing in my garden?" she asked.

His blue eyes swept the girl's slim, supple figure as she lay in the hammock with a long, raking glance that missed nothing and then came back to her face.

"If I answered that question truthfully you'd pretend to be offended," he said.

"I shouldn't pretend—anything," she retorted. "Please tell me why you're here."

"Oh, that's quite a different proposition! I can answer that one. I'm here as the emissary of my respected Aunt Susan."

"Lady Susan?"

"Yes. We've just walked over from White Windows, and when we arrived and found you were out, and that the delightful old Devonshire party who opened the door to us could supply no recent data concerning your whereabouts, Aunt Susan collapsed into a comfortable chair and sent me to spy out the land."

Ann sprang up out of the hammock.

"How good of her to have walked over in all this heat!" she said, preparing to lead the way back to the house.

"It was my doing," he replied with an air of complacency, as they walked on together. "I only arrived yesterday and she talked so much about you that I was consumed with a quite pardonable anxiety to meet you."

"I hope you found it worth the three-mile walk," commented Ann dryly.

"Oh, quite," he returned with conviction. "I always like making new friends."

The cool assurance of the assertion annoyed her.

"We've hardly got to that stage yet," she observed distantly.

"No. But we shall do"—confidently. "Perhaps further than that, ultimately."

She threw him a quick glance and encountered his eyes fixed on her with a kind of gay bravado—like that of a small boy experimenting how far he dare go. It irritated her—this sanguine assumption of his that he was going to count for something in her life. She walked on more quickly.

"Aren't you rather a conceited person?" she asked mildly.

"I'd prefer to call it having decided ideas," he returned.

"Well, you must know you can't force your ideas on other people."

"Can't I?" He halted in the middle of the path and faced her. "Do you really think that?"

Ann avoided meeting his glance, but she felt it playing over her like lightning over a summer sky. It was as though he had flung down a challenge and dared her to pick it up. She temporised.

"Do I think—what? I've almost forgotten what we were talking about."

"No, you haven't," he returned bluntly. "You're merely evading the question—as every woman does when she's afraid to answer."

"I'm not afraid!" exclaimed Ann indignantly. "I certainly shouldn't be afraid of you," she added, emphasising the final pronoun pointedly.

"Shouldn't you?" He looked down at her with an odd intentness. "Do you know, I think I should rather like to make you—afraid of me."

In spite of herself Ann shrank a little inwardly. She was suddenly conscious of a sense of the man's force, of the dogged tenacity of purpose of which he might be capable. He had not been dowered with that conquering nose and those dare-devil, reckless eyes for nothing! She could imagine him riding rough-shod over anything and any one in order to attain his ends.

She contrived a laugh.

"I hope you won't attempt such a thing," she said, endeavouring to speak lightly. "If you do, I shall appeal to Lady Susan for protection."

"That wouldn't help you any," he assured her. "Aunt Susan would let you down quite shamelessly. She keeps a permanently soft spot in her heart for disreputable characters—like me."

When they reached the house they discovered Lady Susan located in the easiest chair she could find, placidly smoking a cigarette, her gold-knobbed ebony stick—inseparable companion of her walks abroad—propped up beside her. From outside the front door could be heard sundry scratchings and appealing whines, punctuated by an occasional hopeful bark, which emanated from the bunch of dogs without whom she was rarely to be seen in Silverquay. They went by the generic name of the Tribes of Israel—a gentle reference to their tendency to multiply, and they ran the whole gamut of canine rank, varying in degree from a pedigree prize-winner to a mongrel Irish terrier which Lady Susan had picked up in a half-starved condition in a London side-street and had promptly adopted. The last-named was probably her favourite, since, as Forrester had remarked, she had a perennially soft spot in her heart for disreputable characters.

"My dear," she said, as Ann stooped and kissed her, "I do hope and pray that your adorable Maria Coombe is at this moment concerning herself with the making of tea. Much as I love you, I shouldn't have toiled over here in this appalling heat but for this graceless nephew of mine, who would give me no peace till I did. So I chose the lesser evil."

Forrester seemed supremely unrepentant, but Ann noticed that when tea appeared he waited rather charmingly on Lady Susan, anticipating her wants even down to the particular brand of cigarette she preferred to smoke when, after swallowing three cups of scaldingly hot tea a la Russe, she pronounced her thirst satisfactorily assuaged. There was a certain half-humorous, half-tender indulgence in his manner towards her, and Ann could imagine that he would know very well how to spoil the woman he loved. But he would master her completely first. Of that she felt sure.

It appeared that he had descended upon White Windows unexpectedly. He had been cruising round the coast and, without troubling to apprise Lady Susan of his intention, had suddenly elected to pay her a visit, and his yacht, the Sphinx, was now lying at anchor in Silverquay Bay.

"And even now I don't know how long he proposes staying!" smiled his aunt.

"How long?" He smiled back at her. "The question is, how long will you put up with me? I don't think—now"—with a swift, audacious glance which Ann refused to meet—"that I can do better than throw myself on the hospitality of White Windows for the remainder of the summer."

"My dear boy"—Lady Susan beamed. "Will you really? I should love to have you; you know that. And, after all"—with a twinkle—"Silverquay has its amusements. We take tea with each other, and boat, and bathe—"

"I can do all those things," said Forrester modestly. He turned suddenly to Ann. "Can you swim?"

"I can keep up for about two strokes," she replied, smiling. "After that, overcome by my own prowess, I sink like a stone."

"Then I'll teach you," he said. "We'll begin to-morrow. What time and where do you generally bathe?"

Ann raised one or two feeble objections, but they were promptly overruled, and before she quite knew how it had happened she found herself committed to a promise that she would be at Berrier Cove the following morning, prepared to take a first lesson in the art of swimming.

"It's really a very sensible idea," approved Lady Susan. "If you'd actually tipped over into Lac Leman that night, you'd certainly have gone to the bottom if you'd had to depend on your own unaided efforts."

"What happened?" asked Forrester with interest, and Lady Susan embarked on a graphic account of Ann's adventure during the progress of the Venetian fete at Montricheux, and of the way in which Eliot Coventry had come to her rescue.

"Coventry? Is that the morose-looking individual who lives at Heronsmere?" inquired Brett.

Ann glanced up in some surprise.

"Oh, have you met him already?"

"We came across him with Brian Tempest on our way here," explained Lady Susan. "The two men are rather a study in contrasts," she added. "Brian is really a great dear. I always think it's so clever of him to have preserved his faith in human nature when he's condemned to live with that oil-and-vinegar sister of his. It may be very unchristian of me"—with a small schoolboy grin—"but I simply can't abide Caroline Tempest!"

Shortly afterwards she professed herself sufficiently rested to essay the return journey to White Windows.

"I shall certainly come down to the Cove to-morrow and watch you disporting yourselves in the briny," she said, as she kissed Ann good-bye. "Does Robin bathe with you?"

"When he has time. But Cara Hilyard is sure to be there. She swims like a fish."

"That's the lovely lady who lives at the Priory, isn't it? You'll have to meet her, Brett."

"If she is a Mrs. Dene Hilyard, I know her already," he answered. "I used to meet her with her husband in London sometimes—and a pretty brute he was! I nearly ran away with her just to get her out of his clutches," he added lightly.

"Well, she's out of them now, poor soul, for keeps," said Lady Susan.

Later, as they walked home together across the fields, accompanied by the now jubilant Tribes of Israel, she returned to the subject.

"If you'll promise not to discredit me by running away with her, Brett, we'll go over to see your friend at the Priory. I should have to call, in any case, before long."

"You needn't be afraid. There's not the remotest danger of my wanting to run off with her."

"She's rather a beautiful person," warned Lady Susan laughingly. "You'll probably lose your heart to her within half an hour."

"I've only done such a thing once in my life," he replied coolly. "I'm not likely to do it again."

"When was that, Brett?" she asked with some curiosity. She had never heard of his having any serious love-affair.

"To-day," he replied unexpectedly.

Lady Susan paused and surveyed him with unfeigned astonishment.

"Ann?" she cried. "Do you mean you've fallen in love with my little Ann—already?"

"I mean rather more than that," he said deliberately. "I mean that I'm going to marry your little Ann."

His aunt regarded him with a gleam of amusement.

"Ann Lovell is a young woman with a very decided mind of her own," she observed. "It's just conceivable she might refuse you."

Forrester returned her glance with eyes like blue steel.

"It wouldn't make a bit of difference if she did," he said laconically.



CHAPTER XIII

"FRIENDSHIP IMPLIES TRUST"

"Can you put me up? Tony."

Ann was sitting in the garden one morning, industriously occupied in shelling peas, when the foregoing terse wire was handed to her by the village telegraph boy. Tony's silence throughout the last few weeks had somewhat disturbed her. She had not received a single line from him since the day he had accompanied her to Victoria station and seen her safely on board the train for Silverquay, and now her brows drew together rather anxiously as she perused this unexpected message.

The telegram had been handed in at the local post office at Lorne, so it was obvious that Tony was at home, and the only reason she could surmise for his sudden request was that he had had a rather bigger quarrel than usual with his uncle.

She scribbled an affirmative reply on the prepaid form which had accompanied the wire and dispatched it by the telegraph boy, who was waiting placidly in the sunshine—and looked as though he were prepared to wait all day if necessary. Then, when she had slit the last fat pod in her basket and shelled its contents, she picked up the bowl of shiny green peas and carried it into the kitchen where Maria was busy making bread.

"Can we do with a visitor, Maria?" she asked, flapping the flimsy pink telegram gaily in front of her. "Here's Mr. Tony Brabazon wiring to know if we can put him up."

"Master Tony?" Maria relapsed into the familiar appellation of the days when she had been not infrequently moved to cuff the said Master Tony's ears with gusto, on occasions when he took nursery tea at Lovell Court and failed to comport himself, in Maria's eyes, "as a little gentleman should."

"Why, yes, miss, us could do with Master Tony." Her face broadened into a beaming smile. "'Twould be like the old days to have him back, scrawling round my kitchen again and stealing the jam pasties. Do you mind his ways when Mr. Lovell he was travelling in furrin parts an' I was cooking for you and Master Robin? And there's not many can better my jam pasties when I put my mind to it, though I do say it."

"Well, you'll have him 'scrawling round your kitchen' before long, I expect," replied Ann.

Maria searched her face with kindly curiosity.

"You'm well pleased, miss, bain't you?"

Ann smiled.

"Very pleased."

Evidently the answer did not convey all that Maria had hoped for, after kneading her dough energetically for a few moments, she threw out negligently:

"I used to fancy at one time that you and Master Tony might be thinking of getting married some day. I suppose I was wrong."

"Quite out of it, Maria." Ann looked preternaturally serious. "And, anyway, I thought you hadn't a very high opinion of matrimony and didn't recommend it?"

"Well, I will say my 'usband wasn't one to make you think a lot of it," acknowledged Maria, still kneading with vigour. "But there! There's a power of difference in men, same as there is in yeast. Some starts working right away, and when you puts it down afore the fire your bread plums up beautiful. But I've known yeast what you couldn't get to work as it should—stale stuff, maybe—and then the bread lies 'eavy on your stomach. It's like that with husbands. I dare say some of 'em be good enough, but there's some what isn't, and George Coombe, he was one of that sort. But I don't bear him no grudge. He was a bit plaguey to live with, but he died proper—with his face to the foe, as you may say, so I've no call to be ashamed of him."

"I'm sure you haven't," agreed Ann warmly, and, leaving Maria to her bread-making, she ran off to feed the poultry. Much to her delight, her first brood of fluffy youngsters had hatched out the previous day.

A few hours later Tony wired "Arriving 3.30 train to-morrow." And now "to-morrow" had become to-day, and Ann, alone in the ralli-cart, was sending Dick Turpin smartly along the road to the station.

The station at Silverquay, as is so often the case at a seaside town, was more or less of a common meeting ground for the inhabitants, and it was quite an unusual thing not to run across some one one knew there, exchanging a library book or purchasing a paper at the bookstall. So that it was no surprise to Ann, as she made her way on to the platform, to see Eliot Coventry coming towards her, an unfolded newspaper under his arm.

Otherwise, the platform was deserted. The train was not yet signalled, and neither stationmaster nor porter had emerged into view. Without absolute discourtesy it was impossible for Eliot to avoid speaking to her, and Ann's heart quickened its beat a little as, after one swift, almost perturbed glance, he approached her. He looked rather tired, and there was a restless, thwarted expression in his eyes. So might look the eyes of a man who habitually denied himself the freedom to act as his inclinations demanded, and Ann was conscious of a sudden impulse of compassion that overcame the feeling of hurt pride which his recent attitude towards her had inspired. She responded to his greeting with a small, friendly smile, leavened with just a spice of mischief.

"So you're not going to cut me altogether, then?"

"Cut you? Why should I?" he said quickly.

She shook her head.

"I don't know why. But you've been doing the next thing to it lately, haven't you?"

Then, as he stared moodily down, at her without answering, she continued with the quaint, courageous candour which was a part of her:

"Will you tell me quite honestly, Mr. Coventry—would you rather that Robin hadn't a sister living with him at the Cottage? Because, if so, I can easily go away again. I shouldn't have any difficulty in finding a job, and Maria Coombe is quite capable of looking after Robin!"

While she was speaking a startled look of dismay overspread his face.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed in an aghast voice. "Have I been as rude as all that?"

"Not rude, exactly. Only when first I came you seemed quite pleased that I should be at the Cottage. But now—lately—" She broke off lamely. It was difficult to put the thing into words. There was nothing, actually, that he had done or left undone. It was a matter of atmosphere—an atmosphere of chilly indifference of which she was acutely conscious in his presence and which made her feel unwelcome.

But he refused to help her out. His eyes were bent on her face, and it seemed almost as though there were a certain eagerness behind their intent gaze.

"Yes," he repeated. "And now—lately?"

"You've been—unfriendly," she answered simply.

The eagerness died out of his eyes, replaced by the old brooding unhappiness which Ann had read in them the day she had first seen him at the Montricheux Kursaal.

"Friendship and I have very little to say to each other." He spoke with a quiet bitterness that was the growth of years. "Friendship implies trust."

A bell clanged somewhere, but the signal arm fell unheeded by the man and woman whose conversation had so suddenly become charged with a strange new kind of intimacy.

"Then you don't trust me?" There was a hurt note in Ann's voice. She was not used to being distrusted.

Coventry smiled ironically, as though at some secret jest of which the edge was turned against himself.

"Sometimes I almost do," he said. "But on the whole—forgive me!—I haven't a blind faith in your sex." He paused, then added rather grimly: "A burnt child fears the fire, and I had my lesson many years ago."

"So you really deserve your reputation?"

"My reputation?"

"Current gossip sets you down as a confirmed misogynist, you know."

"For once, then, current gossip is correct."

The whistle of the approaching train shrilled piercingly through the air and, startled back to a realisation of the present, Ann glanced hastily up the line.

"You're meeting some one?" asked Eliot, his eyes following the same direction. She assented, and he turned as though to leave her. All at once he swung round on his heel and said brusquely:

"You need never imagine you're not wanted at the Cottage. I like to think of you there."

Without waiting for an answer he lifted his hat and strode away, and a minute later, with a harsh grating of brakes, the train ran into the station and Ann moved quickly towards it.

Tony sprang out on to the platform and hurried forward to greet her. He was looking thinner than when she had last seen him. His face was a little haggard, and the eyes beneath their long lashes were hard and bright.

"This is awfully good of you, Ann," he said, speaking a trifle awkwardly. "Does Robin mind my suddenly billeting myself on you like this?"

"Mind? Why, of course not! We're both delighted. And there's some one else who is nearly bursting with excitement at the idea of seeing you again—Maria Coombe. You haven't forgotten her?"

"Forgotten old Maria? By Jove, no! My ears tingle yet when I think of her." And for an instant a smile of amused recollection chased away the moodiness of his expression. "Is she with you at the Cottage, then?"

"Yes. She volunteered to come to us, and you may guess we jumped at the idea. To have dear old Maria back smooths our path in life considerably, bless her! And I love to listen to her Devon accent! It sounds so homelike."

Tony seemed rather subdued on the homeward drive, but his spirits rallied when they reached the Cottage, where Robin was waiting for them at the gateway, with Billy Brewster hovering importantly in the middle distance. Maria welcomed the new arrival with open arms, and the tea she had prepared for the occasion was a rich display of what she could accomplish in the way of cakes and pasties when she "put her mind to it." Tony did full justice to them and chaffed her unmercifully, to her huge delight, and for the moment one might have imagined him nothing but a big gay schoolboy, home for the holidays.

It was not until later on, when Robin had gone out again, and he and Ann were sitting smoking together under the latter's favourite oak, that he unburdened his soul.

"I'm everlastingly grateful to you for answering my S.O.S. so promptly," he said then. "Uncle Philip was simply making life unbearable at home."

Ann was swinging gently in the hammock, while Tony had flung himself down at full length on the sun-warmed turf. Her eyes rested on him reflectively.

"How was that?" she asked.

"Oh"—impatiently—"the usual thing, of course! Money! I asked him to let me have a hundred or two extra, and he simply went straight up in the air over it."

"A hundred or two! Oh, Tony, have you got into debt again?"

"I haven't been running up bills, if that's what you mean. But I've had bad luck at cards—and of course I had to square things up."

Ann suppressed a sigh. It was the same old story—that ineradicable gaming spirit which had come down from sire to son through half a dozen generations, and which seemed to have concentrated in full strength in the offspring of poor Dick Brabazon.

A few questions elicited the facts. Following upon his return from Switzerland Tony had been playing cards regularly, with, as he explained, "the most infernal luck—I made an absolute corner in Yarboroughs night after night." The set of people with whom he mixed played unusually high points—Brett Forrester's set, as a matter of fact, although he himself had cleared out of town early in order to go yachting. Then, after losing far more than he could afford to pay, Tony had tried to recoup his fortunes by backing a few horses, and another hundred had been added to his original losses. Ultimately, when he and his uncle had gone down to Lorne, he had been compelled to make a clean breast of things and ask for money with which to settle his debts. "Debts of honour," he had termed them, and the description acted like a red rag to a bull. Sir Philip had lost his temper completely.

"'Debts of honour' you call 'em, you young jackanapes!" he had raged. "I call them debts of the dirtiest dishonour you could pick up out of the gutter!" He swept Tony's indignant remonstrances to one side. "If you call it honourable to play for money when you haven't got it to pay with if you lose, a sense of honour's a different thing from what it was in my young days. Why—why—why—" he spluttered, "it's no better than stealing! You deserve a damn good hiding, let me tell you, and it's what you'll get one of these days if you can't keep straight, you young devil!"

The old man had stormed on for a heated half-hour or so, while Tony had stood by and listened to him, white-faced and furious, his haughty young head flung up and his teeth clenched to keep back the bitter answers that fought for utterance. Finally, his hand still shaking with rage, Sir Philip had written a cheque that would cover his nephew's losses.

"That's the last time I pay your gambling debts," he had said as he flung down the pen. "You've an allowance of six hundred a year, and if you exceed that again I'll fire you out of the house neck and crop, and be damned to you!"

"I'll go now, sir—at once, if you wish!" Tony had returned with cool insolence.

"Go? Where would you go, I'd like to know?" Sir Philip had flung at him sneeringly. And just to prove that he could and would go if he chose, and because he was filled with a wild spirit of revolt and anger, Tony had despatched a telegram to Ann and had quitted Lorne the very next day.

"He was insufferable!" he declared stormily. "Great Scott! Does the man think I'm a child to be cuffed into obedience? I warned him for his own sake he'd better never lay a finger on me!"

"He never would, Tony," said Ann. "Of that I'm sure. He's far too fond of you, for one thing."

"No, I don't suppose he would, really," conceded Tony. "But when he flies into a rage, he hardly knows what he's saying or doing. He's got the Brabazon temper all right, the same as I've got the family love of gambling."

"Oh, Tony, I wish you'd give it all up!" exclaimed Ann impulsively. And then the colour rushed hotly into her face as she recalled with sudden vividness the circumstances in which he had once offered to renounce every form of gambling.

Absorbed in the interests of the new life in which she found herself, the recollection of that moonlit night on the steep side of Roche d'Or had slipped into the background of her thoughts. Now it leaped abruptly into the forefront, and she felt helpless and constrained, unable to urge her appeal. The answer Tony could give back was so obvious.

"I haven't the least intention of giving it up," he said in a hard voice. "It's the chief pleasure in life to me. Trailing around Lorne and harrying his tenants happen to be Uncle Philip's pet enjoyments. I don't ask him to give those up. And I reserve the right to amuse myself in my own way."

He switched the conversation on to another subject, and, after a decent interval, excused himself on the plea that he must "unpack his traps."

Ann watched him stalking back to the house with gravely wistful eyes. Neither by word nor look had he implied the slightest recollection of the occasion when he had asked her to be his wife nor of her answer, and she realised that with the ingrained pride of his race he chose to consider the incident as closed. "Then that's finished," he had said at the time. "I shan't ask you again." And he had meant every word of it. With a headstrong determination he had accepted his dismissal and henceforward regarded himself as free to make ducks and drakes of his life if it so pleased him. She shrank from the knowledge. It seemed to lay a heavy sense of responsibility upon her.

Yet she could not find it in her heart to regret her decision. She felt deeply thankful that the mothering, protective impulse which had almost led her into promising to marry Tony had been stayed by Lady Susan's wise words. This hot-headed, undisciplined boy, despite his lovableness and charm, was not the type of man who would make a woman of Ann's fine fibre happy as his wife. Perhaps, unconsciously to herself, she was mentally contrasting him with some one else—with a man who, stern, and embittered though he might be, yet gave her a curious feeling of reliance, a sense of secret reserves of strength that would never fail whatever demand life might make upon them.

It seemed to her as if she and Eliot had drawn nearer to each other during their talk together on the deserted railway platform—as though some intangible barrier between them had been broken down. She could not put into actual words the thought which flitted fugitively through her mind—it was too vague and indeterminate. Only she was subconsciously aware that some change had taken place—that their relation to each other was curiously altered.

As she lay in bed that night, her mind a confused jumble of the day's happenings, one thought rose clear above the medley—the memory of his last words to her:

"You need never imagine you're not wanted at the Cottage. I like to think of you there."



CHAPTER XIV

THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE

Under Brett Forrester's tutelage, Ann's progress in the art of swimming proceeded apace. Since his arrival at White Windows, the weather had been perfect—still, dewy mornings, veiled in mist, melting by midday into a blaze of deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine—and every day Ann and Mrs. Hilyard, accompanied by Forrester and very often by Robin in addition, might have been seen descending to Berrier Cove, the favourite bathing beach of the neighbourhood. Quite frequently, too, Lady Susan would join them in the water—she was an excellent straight-forward swimmer, though "without any monkey tricks," as she regretfully acknowledged. On these occasions the Tribes of Israel would sit in a mournful row along the shore, watching the proceedings with concerned brown eyes. They themselves, individually and collectively, exhibited an unfeigned distaste for every form of aquatic sport which, Brett wickedly suggested, might be due to some subconscious atavistic emotion relative to the Red Sea episode. When they had suffered their adored mistress's temerity in silence for as long as canine toleration could be expected to endure, one or other of them would lift up his voice in a long-drawn wail of protest, the others would immediately join in, and the chorus of howls continued to make day hideous until Lady Susan issued from the water and hurried into her tent to dress.

Punishment and persuasion proved equally futile as a corrective. Inexplicable though it appeared, their mistress apparently derived some obscure satisfaction out of the process of splashing about in the wet sea, and because they loved her they bore it as long as they could. But after the expiration of a certain time-limit nothing could quiet them except Lady Susan's prompt emergence from the water.

Tony's arrival had added yet another member to the bathing contingent. He seemed to have forgotten all his troubles, and entered with zest into any and every sort of amusement which Silverquay afforded. A letter Ann had received from Sir Philip was primarily responsible for this care-free attitude. "Keep Tony as long as you want," the old man had written. "But you may tell the young fool he can come home when he likes. I shan't bite his head off." A slow, pleased smile had dawned on Tony's face as Ann read out this particular extract from the letter. Quarrel as he and his uncle might, they were genuinely fond of each other, and although Tony would not for worlds have admitted it, the knowledge that Sir Philip was really seriously annoyed with him had weighed heavily on his mind.

Since the removal of this incubus he had reverted to his usual high spirits and, between them, he and Brett Forrester had "made things hum," as he described it. Boating, bathing, and picnics had been the order of the day, and the latest proposal, emanating from Forrester, was that they should all dine one evening on board the Sphinx. The date had been fixed to coincide with a night of full moon, and the invitations included both Eliot Coventry and the two Tempests.

The former had taken but little part in the summer diversions inaugurated by Brett and Tony. Nevertheless, he had been persuaded into joining one of the picnics. On this occasion the hostess had been Lady Susan, and she had simply declined to accept his refusal.

"Man was not made to live alone," she had assured him. "We know that by the Garden of Eden arrangements, it's not the least use going against old-established custom, my dear man. So you'll come, won't you?" And somehow with Lady Susan's kind, merry dark eyes twinkling up at him he had not been able to find the ungraciousness to refuse.

But when the occasion came he had contributed very little to the gaiety of nations. He left early, on the ground that he had an appointment to keep in Ferribridge, and Ann felt as though he had joined the party more in the capacity of a looker-on than anything else. She said as much to him a day or two later when he chanced to meet her in the village, executing household shopping errands, and they had walked home together.

"You are quite right," he answered. "That's what I am—a looker-on at life. I've no wish to be anything else."

He no longer avoided her now, as he had been wont to do, and an odd sort of friendship had sprung up between them. But it was often punctuated by some such speech as the foregoing, and Ann felt that although he had sheathed the sword he was still armoured with a coat of mail. It was difficult to bring these almost brutal speeches, ground out of some long-harboured bitterness, into relation with the sweetness of that sudden, rare smile of his. The man was an enigma. He asked for friendship and then, when it was tentatively proffered, withdrew himself abruptly as though he feared it.

Brett Forrester proceeded along diametrically opposite lines. No nuances or subtle shades of feeling complicated life for him. He knew exactly what he wanted and went straight for it, all out, and Ann was conscious that she was fighting a losing battle in her effort to keep him at a distance. He had never, so far, made deliberate love to her, but there was a certain imperious possessiveness in his manner, a definite innuendo in his gay, audacious speeches which she found it very hard to combat. He seemed entirely oblivious of any lack of response on her part, and there was a light-hearted, irresponsible charm and camaraderie about him that was difficult to resist.

"What's the matter with you this morning?" he demanded one day when Ann had successfully infused a little formality into her manner.

"Nothing. Why should there be?" she returned.

"No reason at all. Only you seemed to be emulating the stiffness of a ramrod, and I thought you must be getting frightened of me—rigid with fear, you know"—impudently.

What could any one do but laugh? It was useless to try and treat him with aloof dignity if he promptly interpreted it as a sign of fear.

"I don't see anything in you to inspire terror," Ann submitted.

"You don't? Good. Then come along down to the Cove, and I'll teach you a new stroke."

And then, as though to contradict every opinion she or any one else might have formed of him, he was as painstaking and encouraging over the swimming lesson which ensued as though his whole reputation depended on her proficiency.

A day or two later, when Ann, accompanied by Tony and Robin, descended to Berrier Cove for her morning dip, it was to find the beach, at that time usually dotted about with bathers in vari-coloured bathing suits and peignoirs, deserted by all save the hardiest and most determined.

The weather had changed with all the abruptness with which the English climate seems able to accomplish such transitions. A strong gale of wind was blowing, and the placid blue sea which, even at high tide, had been lapping the shore very tranquilly throughout the last fortnight, was converted into a rolling, grey-green stretch of water, breaking at its rim into towering waves.

"It looks a bit too rough for you, Ann," observed Robin, surveying the scene doubtfully, "I don't think even your new-found prowess at swimming will be of much use to you to-day."

"It would be all right once you're through the breakers," suggested Tony. "There's a chap swimming out there, I see."

He pointed to where a wet, dark head bobbed up and down like a cork beyond reach of the waves that reared themselves up to an immense height before they crashed down in a flurry of whirling foam on the beaten shore.

"Tough work, though," replied Robin. "There's the deuce of a current running over there, and Ann's not an experienced enough swimmer to tackle a drag like that."

Ann's face had fallen. The idea of foregoing her daily plunge did not commend itself to her in the least.

"I don't see why I can't have a dip—just get wet, you know," she remonstrated wistfully.

"You mustn't think of such a thing!" came in quick, imperative tones. Startled, she turned round to find Forrester standing at her elbow, with Cara Hilyard beside him. Amid the hurly-burly of noise created by the breakers she had not noticed the sound of their approach.

"Do you hear?" he repeated. "You mustn't think of bathing to-day."

Ann's head went up. The imperious speech, uttered as though it were a foregone conclusion that she would meekly obey its mandate, roused her to instant opposition.

"But I am thinking of it," she replied, masking her irritation beneath an outward assumption of calm.

"I really don't think you should," said Cara persuasively.

"You're not bathing to-day, are you, Mrs. Hilyard?" put in Robin quickly, a look of swift anxiety on his face.

She shook her head, smiling.

"No. I'm afraid I'm too big a coward."

"I should rather put it that you've got too much sense," returned Robin. "It really isn't safe for any but a very strong swimmer to-day."

"Safe!" exclaimed Brett, angrily, snatching at the last word and flinging it, as it were, in Ann's face. "Of course it isn't safe!"

"Then what's the meaning of that?" asked Ann pertinently, pointing to the bathing suit he carried on his arm.

"Oh, I'm going in. It would take more than this bit of sea to drown me"—carelessly.

He was making no idle boast. As Ann well know, he was almost as much at home in the water as he was on land. And presently, when it had been decided that only the three men should risk the roughness of the breakers, she stood watching him with quiet, unstinted admiration as, timing his plunge to a nicety, he met a large billow as it rose, dived sheer through its green depths, and emerged into the comparatively smooth water on the further side before its white, curving crest could thunder down on to the shore.

Robin and Tony made but a brief stay in the water—the former curtailing the proceedings because he very much preferred the idea of keeping Mrs. Hilyard company where she sat in a fold of the rocks. Meanwhile Ann's gaze was riveted enviously on Forrester's sleek red head as it appeared and disappeared with the rise and fall of the swelling sea. He looked as if he were thoroughly enjoying the buffeting he was getting.

"I should like to go in—just for a few minutes," she said discontentedly. There are few things that draw the genuine sea-lover more strongly than the longing to plunge into the tantalising, gleaming water and feel the rush and prick of it and its buoyancy beneath one's limbs.

Cara looked up in dismay.

"You're not thinking of going, after all?" she exclaimed. "Oh, don't, Ann!"—urgently. "It's really too risky to-day. If one of those big breakers knocked you down you wouldn't have time to get up again before another came. I once saw a woman drowned just in that way. It was horrible. She was flung down by a huge breaker, and before she could pick herself up a second wave broke over her. She had no chance to get her breath. And there wasn't any one near enough to help her. I saw it all happen from the cliff." She shuddered a little at the recollection.

"And if one of those waves didn't knock me down," retorted Ann, "I should have the most glorious dip imaginable. Honestly, Cara"—coaxingly—"I wouldn't do more than just dash in and out again."

"Well, ask Robin what he thinks first," begged Cara.

Ann shook her head.

"I'd much rather ask him after!" she answered whimsically, "In fact, I'm going to sneak into the water before he and Tony finish their respective toilettes."

Without more ado she vanished into the tent which she usually shared with Cara, and in a very short space of time reappeared equipped for the water, the tassel of her jaunty little bathing-cap fluttering defiantly in the wind. Slipping out of her peignoir, she let it fall to the ground and emerged a slender, naiad-like figure in her green bathing-suit. She ran, white-footed, to the edge of the water and danced into the creaming foam of a receding wave, while Cara watched her with inward misgivings. Even from where she sat she could see how strong was the undertow—each wave as it retreated dragging back with it both sand and pebbles, and even quite large stones, in a swirling seaward rush against the pull of which it was difficult to maintain a footing. Ann, lithe and supple though she was, staggered uncertainly in the effort to retain her balance, her feet sinking deep into the shifting sand, as she turned to wave a reassuring hand to the solitary watcher on the beach.

And then it happened—the thing which Cara had foreseen must almost inevitably ensue. She had a momentary glimpse of the slim naiad figure swaying against a background of sea and sky, then a terrific wave towered up behind it, blotting out the horizon and seeming for an instant to stand poised, smooth and perpendicular like a solid wall of green glass. She saw Ann's face change swiftly as she realised her danger, the upward fling of her arms as she tried to spring to the surface in an effort to escape the full force of the wave and be carried in on its crest. But it was too late. With a crash like gun-thunder the huge billow broke, and to Cara's straining eyes it seemed that Ann's light form was snatched up as though of no more moment than a floating straw and buried beneath a seething, tumbling avalanche of waters.

She sprang to her feet and ran towards the water, shrieking for help as she ran. But the noise of the sea drowned her cries so that neither Robin nor Tony, still dressing in one of the tents, heard anything amiss. Even as she called and shouted she realised the utter uselessness of it. No weak woman's voice could carry against that thunderous roar. In the same instant, she caught sight of Brett's head and shoulders in the distance, and she waved and beckoned to him frenziedly. With a choking gasp of relief, she caught his answering gesture before he turned and headed straight for the shore, shearing through the water with a powerful over-hand stroke that brought him momentarily nearer.

Though actually not more than a few seconds, it seemed to Cara an eternity before the huge wave which had engulfed Ann spent itself. Then, as it receded she discerned her figure struggling in the backwash, and as the girl at last dragged herself to her knees Cara rushed waist-deep into the foaming, eddying flood in a plucky effort to reach her. But, before she could get near enough, the suction of the retreating wave had swept Ann out of her reach and the next incoming breaker thundered over her again. Cara herself barely escaped its savage onslaught, and as she staggered into safety she turned a desperate, agonised face seaward. Brett was still some yards away, and Ann would die—die with succour almost at hand! Her own helplessness drove her nearly frantic. She was beating her hands together and quite unconsciously repeating Brett's name over and over in a sick agony of urgency.

"Brett! Brett! God, let him come in time!... Brett! Brett! Brett!..."

The retreating wave revealed once more the slight girl-figure, spent and effortless this time, tossing impotently in the churning backwash. Forrester would be too late! A third wave would batter the life out of that fragile body. Cara's voice died into a strangled sob of despair.

... And then came the sound of racing footsteps, something passed her like a flash, and the white spray flew up in a dense cloud as a tall figure hurled itself headlong into the sea. For an instant Cara could distinguish nothing but a dark blot and the blur of flying spume as it spattered against her face. Then, with a shaking cry of utter thankfulness, she saw Eliot Coventry come striding out from amid the maelstrom of surging waters, bearing Ann's unconscious form in his arms.

He carried her swiftly beyond reach of the hungry, devouring waves and, laying her down on the sand, tore off his coat and placed it beneath her head. At the same moment Forrester reached the shore and raced towards them, and as Eliot straightened himself it was to meet the other man's eyes blazing into his—savage, challenging eyes, like those of a tiger robbed of its prey. For an instant the two men remained staring straight into each other's faces, while on the ground between them lay Ann's slender, white-limbed body, limp and unconscious.

To Cara, hurrying towards them as fast as the wet skirts which clung about her would allow, the brief scene seemed like a picture flung vividly upon a screen. In that moment of fierce stress the innermost thoughts of the two men were nakedly revealed upon their faces—if not to each other, at least to the clear, unerring vision of the woman, who caught her breath sharply between her teeth in a sudden blinding flash of enlightenment.

The little group seemed to her symbolical—the two men standing face to face like hostile forces, with the young, girlish figure lying helplessly between them.



CHAPTER XV

ANCIENT HISTORY

Ann opened her eyes and stared incuriously up into a blank, indeterminate expanse of white. It was quite without interest—conveyed no meaning to her whatever. Moreover, her eyelids felt inexplicably heavy, as though they were weighted. So she let them fall again, and the placid, reposeful sense of nothingness which had been momentarily interrupted enveloped her once more. She was conscious of no particular sensation of any kind, neither painful nor pleasurable, but merely of an immense peace and tranquillity.

Presently a faint feeling of curiosity concerning that odd expanse of white overhead filtered into her consciousness, gradually increasing in strength until it became a definite irritation, like the prolonged light scratching of a finger-nail up a surface of silk. She opened her eyes again reluctantly. It was still there, immediately above her—a formless stretch of dull white. She wondered whether it extended indefinitely, and her eyes travelled slowly along until they were arrested by a narrow line of demarcation. Here the expanse of white ceased abruptly, at right angles to a misty blue surface in the centre of which glimmered a square of light. Ann's mind seemed to struggle up from some profound depth where it had lain quiescent and feebly and disjointedly signalled the words: "Ceiling ... wall ... window...." And finally, with an immense effort, "Room."

After that the cogs of her mental machinery began to move in a more normal manner, though still slowly and confusedly. She recaptured the memory of a blurred murmur of voices and of some fiery liquid being poured down, her throat which stung and smarted abominably as it went down. Later had followed a pleasant dreamy consciousness of warmth which had brought with it realisation of the fact that previously she had been feeling terribly cold. Then voices again—notably Maria's this time: "She'll do now, Mrs. Hilyard, mum. 'Tis only warmth she wants."

Why did she want warmth? When it was summer. She was sure it was summer. She remembered seeing the sun overhead—hanging in the middle of the sky just like one of those solid-looking gold halos which the Old Masters used to paint round the head of a saint. At least ... had it been in the sky ... lately? To-day? And then, accompanied by a rush of blind terror, came recollection—of an overcast sky and grey, plunging sea, and of a wild, futile, suffocating struggle against some awful force that had tossed her hither and thither as a child might toss a ball, and had finally surged right over her, blotting out everything.

A little moan of horror escaped her, and immediately Robin's dear familiar voice answered reassuringly:

"You're quite safe, old thing—tucked up in bed. So don't worry."

He was bending over her, and she made an instinctive effort to sit up. The movement sent a stab of agony through her whole body, and she gasped out convulsively:

"It hurts!"

In a moment his arm was round her shoulders, and he had laid her gently back against her pillows.

"Yes. I expect you're pretty well bruised from head to foot," he said in a tone of commiseration.

Ann regarded him uncertainly.

"I feel so queer. What's happened to me? Where—where am I?" she asked.

Robin had the wisdom to answer her quite simply and naturally, telling her in a few words just what had occurred, and, her mind once set at rest, she lay back quietly and very soon dropped off into a sleep of sheer exhaustion. Afterwards followed a timeless period marked by the comings and goings of Maria with hot-water bottles and steaming cups of milk or broth, alternating with intervals of profound slumber. Through it all, waking or sleeping, ran a thread of wearisome pain—limbs so stiff and flesh so bruised that it seemed to Ann as though the wontedly comfortable mattress on which she lay had been stuffed with lumps of coal.

One break occurred in the ordered sequence of sleep and nourishment. This happened when Tony quitted Silverquay to rejoin his uncle. The day following Ann's enforced retirement to bed, a brusque letter had come from the old man, in which he concealed a genuine longing to have his nephew with him again beneath an irritable suggestion that he was probably outstaying his welcome at the Cottage. Robin laughingly reassured Tony upon the latter point, but at the same time he agreed that the young man's return to Lorne might be advisable, since it was obvious Sir Philip was feeling his loneliness considerably more than the proud old autocrat was willing to confess.

So Tony had tiptoed up to Ann's room, when she had roused herself sufficiently to wish him good-bye and bestow upon him a parting injunction "to be good." After which she dropped back once more into the lethargy of weakness, painfully conscious of the fact that relief was only to be found in lying torpidly still and silent.

But all things come to an end in time—though the disagreeable ones seem to take much longer over it than the nice ones—and at the end of a few days Ann was able to sit up in bed without groaning and take an intelligent interest in the fact that her room was lavishly adorned with roses.

"Where did all the flowers come from?" she demanded of Maria.

"Why, 'tis Mr. Forrester what sends they, miss," came the answer, uttered with much satisfaction. Brett had a "way" with him against which even downright Maria Coombe was not proof. "He've a-called here to inquire every day since you was took bad. Very attentive and gentlemanlike, I call't."

"Very," agreed Ann with becoming gravity. "And who else—hasn't any one else"—correcting herself quickly—"been to inquire?".

"'Deed they have! 'Twas 'Can't I see Miss Lovell to-day, Maria?' with first one and then t'other of them. But I told them all the same"—with grim triumph. "'Not till I gives the word,' I told them."

"Who has called, then?" asked Ann curiously.

"Her ladyship up to White Windows, she came, and Mrs. Hilyard, and the rector and that there long-faced sister of his—all of 'em have been, miss. And the squire—he've sent his groom down to ask how you were going on."

"The squire?"

"Mr. Coventry, I'm meaning—he as pulled you out of the water. You ought to be main grateful to him, Miss Ann, for sure."

A faint colour stole up into Ann's white cheeks.

"Oh, I am. You had better send back a message by the groom to that effect," she said curtly.

Maria surveyed her with frank disapproval.

"You should take shame to yourself, speaking that way, miss," she admonished severely. "But I expect you'm hungry-like, that's what 'tis. And I've a beautiful young chicken roasting for your lunch. You'll feel different when you've got a bit of something solid inside you."

The roast chicken, combined with a glass of champagne, certainly contributed towards producing a more cheerful outlook on life, and when, later on in the afternoon, Mrs. Hilyard called, armed with some books for the invalid, and was graciously permitted by Maria to come upstairs, Ann welcomed her with unfeigned delight.

"Well, it's quite nice to see you alive," smiled Cara as they kissed each other. "I really thought you were going to drown before my very eyes the other day."

"Instead of which I've turned up again like a bad penny!"

"Thanks to Mr. Coventry. If he hadn't chanced to be taking a constitutional in the direction of Berrier Cove that morning, I don't know what would have happened."

Ann was not looking at her. Instead, her gaze was directed towards the open window as though the view which offered were of surpassing interest.

"I wondered how it was he came to be on the spot just in the nick of time," she said negligently.

"That was how," nodded Cara. "He'd been for a walk along the shore, and luckily came home by way of the Cove."

"I suppose I shall have to thank him," remarked Ann gloomily.

Cara looked a trifle mystified. Then she smiled.

"It would be—just polite," she submitted.

Ann frowned.

"I always seem to be thanking him!" she complained, and, in response to the other's glance of inquiry, recounted the various occasions on which Coventry had rendered her a service.

"Not a bad record of knight-errantry for a confirmed woman-hater, is it?" she added with a rueful touch of humour.

"He wasn't always a woman-hater," answered Cara slowly. Her pansy-dark eyes held a curious dreaming look.

"I'd forgotten. Of course, you'd met him before you came here. Did you know him pretty well?"

"It was so many years ago," deprecated Cara, with a little wave of her hand which seemed to set her former friendship with Eliot away in the back ages. "But I knew a good deal about him—we knew his people when I was a girl in my teens—and I can understand why—how he became such a misanthrope."

Ann made no answer. Somehow she felt she could not put any direct questions about this man whose changing, oddly contradictory moods had baffled her so completely and—although she would not have acknowledged it—had caught and held her imagination with equal completeness. Perhaps she was hardly actually aware how much the queer, abrupt owner of Heronsmere occupied her thoughts. Mrs. Hilyard, however, continued speaking without waiting to be questioned.

"Eliot Coventry has had just the sort of experience to make him cynical," she went on in her pretty, dragging voice. "Particularly as regards women. His mother was a perfectly beautiful woman, with the temper of a fiend. She lived simply and solely for her own enjoyment, and never cared tuppence about either Eliot or his sister."

"Oh, has he a sister?" The question sprang from Ann's lips without her own volition.

"Yes. She was a very pretty girl, too, I remember."

Ann's thoughts flew back to the day of the Fete des Narcisses, recalling the pretty woman whom she had observed driving with Eliot in the prize car. Probably, since he so disliked women in general, his companion on that occasion had been merely his sister! She felt oddly pleased and contented at this solution of a matter which had nagged her curiosity more than a little at the time.

"Mrs. Coventry—the mother—was utterly selfish, and insisted upon her own way in everything." Cara was pursuing her recollections in a quiet, retrospective fashion which gave Ann the impression that they had no very deep or poignant interest for her. "If she didn't get it—well, there were fireworks!"—smiling. "Once, I remember, Eliot crossed her wishes over something and she flew into a perfect frenzy of temper. There was a small Italian dagger lying on a table near, and she snatched it up and flung it straight at him. It struck him just below one of his eyes; that's how he came by that scar on his cheekbone. She might have blinded him," she added, and for a moment there was a faint tremor in her voice.

"What a brute she must have been!" exclaimed Ann in horror.

"Yes," agreed Cara. "He was unlucky in his mother." After a pause she went on: "And he was unlucky in the woman he loved. He wasn't at all well-off in those days, and she threw him over—broke off the engagement and married a very wealthy man instead."

Ann felt her heart contract.

"I suppose that's what makes him so bitter, then," she said in a low voice. "Probably—he still cares for her."

"No." Cara shook her head. "Eliot Coventry isn't the sort of man to go on caring for a woman who'd proved herself unworthy. I think—I think he'd just wipe her clean out of his life."

"It would be what she deserved," asserted Ann rather fiercely.

"Yes, I suppose it would. But one can feel a little Sorry for her. She spoilt her own life, too."

"Did you know her, then?"

"Yes, I knew her. I think the only excuse to be made for her is that she was very young when it all happened."

"I'm young," said Ann grimly, "but I hope I wouldn't be as mean as that."

"You?" Cara's eyes rested with a wistful kind of tenderness on the flushed face against the pillows. "But, my dear, there's a world of difference between you and the girl Eliot Coventry was in love with."

She got up and, moving across to the window, stood looking out. Below, the pleasant, happy-go-lucky garden rambled desultorily away to the corner where stood the ancient oak supporting Ann's hammock—a garden of odd, unexpected nooks and lawns, with borders of old English flowers, without definite form and looking as if it had grown of its own sweet will into its present comeliness. But the garden conjured up before Cara's mental vision was a very different one—a stately, formal garden entered through an arch of jessamine, with a fountain playing in its centre, tinkling coolly into a marble basin, and a high-backed, carved stone bench set beneath the shade of scented trees. Above all pulsated the deep, sapphire blue of an Italian sky.

The pictured garden faded and Cara turned slowly back into the room. Her eyes looked sad.

"Poor Eliot!" she said. "It's all ancient history now. But one wishes it was possible to give him back his happiness."

When she had gone, Ann lay thinking over the story she had just heard. So it was all true, then—the tale that Eliot had been jilted years ago! It threw a vivid flash of illumination on the many complexities she had come up against in his character. The two women who should mean most in a man's life had both failed him. He bore on his body a scar which surely he must never see reflected in the mirror without recalling the travesty of motherhood that was all he had ever known. And scored into his soul, hidden beneath a bitter reticence and unforgiving cynicism, lay the still deeper scar of that hurt which the woman who was to have been his wife had dealt him.

Ann's annoyance with him because he hadn't troubled to call personally to ascertain how she was melted away in a rush of pitying comprehension. She was conscious of an intense anger against that unknown woman who had so marred his life. She hoped she was being made to pay for it, suffer for it in some way!

And then, all at once, came the realisation that if she had remained faithful, Eliot would probably have been married years ago ... she herself would never have met him.... A burning flush mounted to her very temples, and she hid her face in her hands, trying to shut out the swift, unbidden thought which had wakened within her a strange tumult of emotion. When at last she uncovered her face, her eyes held the wondering, startled look of a young fawn.

She was very young and whole-hearted, utterly innocent of that great miracle which transforms the world, as yet unrecognising of the voice of love—the Voice which, once heard, can never again be muted and forgotten. And now something stirred within her—something new and disturbing and a little frightening.

It was as though she had heard some distant call which she but half understood and, only partly understanding, feared.



CHAPTER XVI

DREAM-FLOWERS

The news of Mrs. Hilyard's visit to the Cottage soon spread abroad, and the following day, when she was allowed downstairs for the first time, Ann held quite a small reception.

Lady Susan, escorted by Forrester and the ubiquitous Tribes of Israel, was the first to arrive. Afterwards came the rector and Miss Caroline, and even Mrs. Carberry, a somewhat consequential dame whose husband was Master of the Heronsfoot Foxhounds, and who had hitherto held rather aloof from anything approaching intimacy and merely paid a stately first call on the Cottage people, unbent sufficiently to take tea informally with the invalid.

She did not, however, bring her daughter, a girl of Ann's own age, with her. A shrewd, rather calculating woman, she had fully recognised the possible attraction that might lie in Robin's steady, grey-green eyes. And since her plans for her daughter's future most certainly did not include marriage with any one so unimportant—and probably hard up—as a young estate agent, she judged it wiser to run no risks. She extracted from Ann a full, true, and particular account of her bathing adventure, and the information that it had been the owner of Heronsmere who had come to the rescue did not appear to afford her much pleasure.

"He's not here this afternoon?" She glanced quickly round the party of friends who had gathered in the pretty, low-ceiled room. "But I suppose he has called already to make sure that you're safe and sound?" There was a kind of acrid sweetness in her tones.

"Oh, no," replied Ann, sensing the woman's latent antagonism. "Why should he?"

"Why, indeed?" Mrs. Carberry laughed dryly. "After all, he can't really feel very grateful to you for procuring him a soaking, can he? A man does so hate to be made a fool of."

"I really don't know what he felt," retorted Ann sweetly, but with heightened colour. "You see, I was unconscious."

"Just as well for you, perhaps." Again that unpleasant little dry laugh. "One feels so draggled, doesn't one, with one's hair all lank and wet?"

Miss Caroline's maidenly mind seemed chiefly oppressed with the immodesty of being rescued from drowning by a member of the other sex.

"How unfortunate it was that Mrs. Hilyard couldn't reach you!" she said, when she got Ann to herself for a few moments. "You must have felt very uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable?" Ann's clear eyes met Miss Caroline's blue bead ones inquiringly.

"Dreadfully uncomfortable, I should think"—with sympathy. "You—you had nothing on, I suppose"—lowering her voice impressively—"but your bathing-gown?"

"Nothing at all," answered Ann, maintaining her gravity with difficulty. "One hasn't usually, you know—to go into the water."

"But you had to be carried out of the water, hadn't you? You must have found it most embarrassing! Most embarrassing!"

"I don't think I did," said Ann.

"Not?"—chidingly. "Oh, Miss Lovell, I can't believe that! Any nice-minded girl—I'm sure, if it had been me I should have fainted out of pure shame at finding myself in a man's arms—without a peignoir!"

"Well, that was just it, you see. I had fainted. So"—the corners of her mouth trembling in spite of herself—"I wasn't able to put on my peignoir."

"I see." Miss Caroline looked slightly relieved. "Then you didn't really know any more about it than one does when having a tooth out under gas? What a good thing! Dear me! What a good thing! And I'm sure Mr. Coventry will try to forget all about it. Any gentleman would. Really, such a—a contretemps makes one feel one ought almost to be fully clothed for bathing, doesn't it?"

She hopped up like a hungry little bird that has just been fed and flitted across the room to talk to Mrs. Carberry, and Ann wondered dryly if she were confiding in the M.F.H.'s wife particulars of the kind of costume she deemed suitable to the occasion when drowning.