the fog, and
very naturally they had supposed that their host, seeing it coming on,
had returned to the yacht without waiting for them. Their surprise,
therefore, when they arrived on board and found him still missing was
scarcely to be wondered at. In consequence, when he descended the
companion ladder and entered the drawing-room, he had to undergo a
cross-examination as to his movements. Strangely enough, this
solicitude for his welfare was far from being pleasing to him. He had
made up his mind to say nothing about the adventure of the afternoon,
and yet, as he soon discovered, it was difficult to account for the
time he had spent ashore if he kept silence on the subject.
Accordingly he made the best excuse that occurred to him, and by
disclosing a half-truth induced them to suppose that he had followed
their party towards the waterfall, and had in consequence been lost in
the fog.

"It was scarcely kind of you to cause us so much anxiety," said Miss
Verney in a low voice as he approached the piano at which she was
seated. "I assure you we have been most concerned about you; and, if
you had not come on board very soon, Captain Marsh and Mr. Foote were
going ashore again in search of you."

"That would have been very kind of them," said Browne, dropping into an
easy-chair; "but there was not the least necessity for it. I am quite
capable of taking care of myself."

"Nasty things mountains," said Jimmy Foote to the company at large. "I
don't trust 'em myself. I remember once on the Rigi going out with old
Simeon Baynes, the American millionaire fellow, you know, and his
daughter, the girl who married that Italian count who fought
Constantovitch and was afterwards killed in Abyssinia. At one place we
very nearly went over the edge, every man-jack of us, and I vowed I'd
never do such a thing again. Fancy the irony of the position! After
having been poverty-stricken all one's life, to drop through the air
thirteen hundred feet in the company of over a million dollars. I'm
perfectly certain of one thing, however: if it hadn't been for the
girl's presence of mind I should not have been here to-day. As it was,
she saved my life, and, until she married, I never could be
sufficiently grateful to her."

"Only until she married!" said Lady Imogen, looking up from the novel
she was reading. "How was it your gratitude did not last longer than
that?"

"Doesn't somebody say that gratitude is akin to love?" ans