onised their mothers and
tolerated their fathers were anathema. It was a trait certain to impress
Roy's Rajput cousin; and Broome wondered whether Helen was alive to the
disturbing possibility; whether, for all her genuine love of the East,
she would acquiesce....

Only the other day, it seemed, he and she had sat together among the
rocks of the dear old Cap, listening to Nevil's amazing news. She it was
who had championed his choice of a bride: and Lilamani had justified her
championship to the full. But then--Lilamani was one in many thousands;
and this affair would be the other way about:--Tara, the apple of their
eye; Tara, with her wild-flower face and her temperament of clear
flame----?

How sharply they tugged at his middle-aged heart, these casual and
opinionated young things, with their follies and fanaticisms, their
Jacob's ladders hitched perilously to the stars; with their triumphs and
failures and disillusions all ahead of them; airily impervious to
proffered help and advice from those who would agonise to serve them if
they could....

A jarring bump in the small of his back cut short his flagrantly
Victorian musings. Dyan's punt was the offender; and Dyan himself,
clutching the pole that had betrayed him, was almost pitched into the
river.

His achievement was greeted by a shout of laughter, and an ironic
"Played indeed!" from Cuthbert Gordon--Broome's grandson. Roy, tumbled
from some starry dream of his own, flashed out imperiously: "Look alive,
you blithering idiot. 'Who are you a-shoving'?"

The Rajput's face darkened; but before he could retort, Tara had risen
and stepped swiftly to his side. Her fingers closed on the pole; and she
smiled straight into his clouded eyes.

"Let _me_, please. I'm sick of lazing and fearfully keen. And I can't
allow my Mother to be drownded by anyone _but_ me. I'd be obliged to
murder the other body, which would be awkward--for us both!"

"Miss Despard--there is no danger----" he muttered--impervious to
humour; and--as if by chance--one of his hands half covered hers.

"Let go," she commanded, so low that no one else knew she had spoken; so
sternly that Dyan's fingers unclosed as if they had touched fire.

"Now, don't fuss. Go and sit down," she added, in her lighter vein.
"You've done your share. And you're jolly grateful to me, really. But
too proud to own it!"

"_Not_ too proud to obey you," he muttered.

She saw the words rather than heard them; and he tu