vi-bond, "you're putting her in the way
of it."

"What?"

Davy was about to light his pipe, but he flung away the match.

"Have you never thought of it?" said Lovibond, "That when a husband
deserts his wife like this he throws her in the way of--"

"Not Nelly, no," said Davy, promptly. "I'll lave _that_ with her,
anyway. Any other woman perhaps, but Nelly--never! She's as pure as new
milk, and no beast milk neither. Nelly going wrong, eh? Well, well! I'd
like to see the man that would... I may have treated her bad... but I'd
like to see the man, I say..."

Then there was another shrieking whistle from the steamer. Willie
Quarrie called up at the window and gesticulated wildly from the lawn
outside.

"Coming, boy, coming," Davy shouted back, and looking at his watch, he
said, "Four minutes and a half--time enough yet."

Then they left the hotel and moved toward the ferry steps. As they
walked Davy begun to laugh. "Well, well!" he said, and he laughed again.
"Aw, to think, to think!" he said, and he laughed once more. But
with every fresh outbreak of his laughter the note of his voice lost
freshness.

Lovibond saw his opportunity, and yet could not lay hold of it, so cruel
at that moment seemed the only weapon that would be effectual. But Davy
himself thrust in between him and his timid spirit. With another hollow
laugh, as if half ashamed of keeping up the deception to the last, yet
convinced that he alone could see through it, he said, "No news of the
girl in the church, mate, eh? Gone home, I suppose?"

"Not yet," said Lovibond.

"No?" said Davy.

"The fact is--but you'll be secret?"

"Coorse."

"It isn't a thing I'd tell everybody--"

"What?"

"You see, if her husband has treated her like a brute, she's his wife,
after all."

Davy drew up on the path. "What is it?" he said.

"I'm to meet her to-night, alone," said Lovibond.

"No!"

"Yes; in the grounds of Castle Mona, by the waterfall, after dark--at
eight o'clock, in fact.

"Castle Mona--by the waterfall--eight o'clock--that's a--now, that must
be a--"

Davy had lifted his pipe hand to give emphasis to the protest on his
lips, when he stopped and laughed, and said, "Amazing thick, eh?"

"Why not," said Lovibond? "Who wouldn't be with a sweet woman like that?
If the fool that's left her doesn't know her worth, so much the better
for somebody else."

"Then you're for making it up there?" said Davy, clearing his throat.

"It'll not be