it up and be friends.'

'Say you would save me, then, and let him drown.'

'I would save you--and him too.'

'And let him drown. Come, or you don't love me!' she teasingly went on.

'And let him drown,' he ejaculated despairingly.

'There; now I am yours!' she said, and a woman's flush of triumph lit
her eyes.

'Only one earring, miss, as I'm alive,' said Unity on their entering the
hall.

With a face expressive of wretched misgiving, Elfride's hand flew like
an arrow to her ear.

'There!' she exclaimed to Stephen, looking at him with eyes full of
reproach.

'I quite forgot, indeed. If I had only remembered!' he answered, with a
conscience-stricken face.

She wheeled herself round, and turned into the shrubbery. Stephen
followed.

'If you had told me to watch anything, Stephen, I should have
religiously done it,' she capriciously went on, as soon as she heard him
behind her.

'Forgetting is forgivable.'

'Well, you will find it, if you want me to respect you and be engaged
to you when we have asked papa.' She considered a moment, and added more
seriously, 'I know now where I dropped it, Stephen. It was on the cliff.
I remember a faint sensation of some change about me, but I was too
absent to think of it then. And that's where it is now, and you must go
and look there.'

'I'll go at once.'

And he strode away up the valley, under a broiling sun and amid the
deathlike silence of early afternoon. He ascended, with giddy-paced
haste, the windy range of rocks to where they had sat, felt and peered
about the stones and crannies, but Elfride's stray jewel was nowhere
to be seen. Next Stephen slowly retraced his steps, and, pausing at a
cross-road to reflect a while, he left the plateau and struck downwards
across some fields, in the direction of Endelstow House.

He walked along the path by the river without the slightest hesitation
as to its bearing, apparently quite familiar with every inch of the
ground. As the shadows began to lengthen and the sunlight to mellow,
he passed through two wicket-gates, and drew near the outskirts of
Endelstow Park. The river now ran along under the park fence, previous
to entering the grove itself, a little further on.

Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a slightly
elevated spot of ground, round which the river took a turn. The
characteristic feature of this snug habitation was its one chimney in
the gable end, its squareness of form disgui