, to her dismay, he had so far come out of his shell
as to allow himself to be nominated a member of the school council. Of
course she knew that this was only to give him more opportunities of
seeing her. As a member of the council, he could visit the school of
which she was mistress as often as he chose, and indeed he soon learned
to take a lively interest in village education. About twice a week he
would come in just as the school was breaking up and offer to walk home
with her, seeking for a favourable opportunity to propose. Hitherto she
had always warded off this last event, but she knew that it must happen.
Not that she was actually afraid of the man himself; he was too much
afraid of her for that. What she did fear was the outburst of wrath
from her father and sister when they learned that she had refused Owen
Davies. It never occurred to her that Elizabeth might be playing a hand
of her own in the matter.

From all of which it will be clear, if indeed it has not become so
already, that Beatrice Granger was a somewhat ill-regulated young woman,
born to bring trouble on herself and all connected with her. Had she
been otherwise, she would have taken her good fortune and married Owen
Davies, in which case her history need never have been written.

CHAPTER VII

A MATRIMONIAL TALE

Before Geoffrey Bingham dropped off into a troubled sleep on that
eventful night of storm, he learned that the girl who had saved his life
at the risk and almost at the cost of her own was out of danger, and in
his own and more reticent way he thanked Providence as heartily as did
Owen Davies. Then he went to sleep.

When he woke, feeling very sick and so stiff and sore that he could
scarcely move, the broad daylight was streaming through the blinds. The
place was perfectly quiet, for the doctor's assistant who had brought
him back to life, and who lay upon a couch at the further end of
the room, slept the sleep of youth and complete exhaustion. Only an
eight-day clock on the mantelpiece ticked in that solemn and aggressive
way which clocks affect in the stillness. Geoffrey strained his eyes to
make out the time, and finally discovered that it wanted a few minutes
to six o'clock. Then he fell to wondering how Miss Granger was, and to
repeating in his own mind every scene of their adventure, till the
last, when they were whirled out of the canoe in the embrace of that
white-crested billow.

He remembered nothing after that, nothi