as a moment's silence, and then she added--

"So it's useless, is it not, to wish that he would?"

The blood about Sam's heart stood still. Were the words a confession
or a sneer. Did they refer to her or to him? He would have given
worlds to know, but her tone disclosed nothing.

"You mean--?"

She gave him no answer, but turned her head to look back. In the
distant boats they had fallen to singing glees. In this they obeyed
tradition: for there is one accomplishment which all Trojans
possess--of fitting impromptu harmonies to the most difficult air.
And still in the pauses of the music Miss Limpenny would exclaim--

"Did you ever see anything more lovely?"

And the Admiral would reply--

"Really, I never did."

Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys could not, of course, hear this. But the voices
of the singers stole down the river and touched her, it may be, with
some sense of remorse for the part she was playing in this Arcadia.

"We are leaving the others a long way behind," she said irresolutely.

"Do you wish to wait for them?"

For a moment she seemed about to answer, but did not. Sam pulled a
dozen vigorous strokes, and the boat shot into the reach opposite
Kit's House.

"That," she said, resting her eyes on the weather-stained front of
Mr. Fogo's dwelling, "is where the hermit lives, is it not? I should
like to meet this man that hates all women."

Sam essayed a gallant speech, but she paid no heed to it.

"What a charming creek that is, beyond the house! Let us row up
there and wait for the others."

The creek was wrapped in the first quiet of evening. There was still
enough tide to mirror the tall trees that bent towards it, and
reflect with a grey gleam one gable of the house behind. Two or
three boats lay quietly here by their moorings; beside them rested a
huge red buoy, and an anchor protruding one rusty tooth above the
water. Where the sad-looking shingle ended, a few long timbers
rotted in the ooze. Nothing in this haunted corner spoke of life,
unless it were the midges that danced and wheeled over the waveless
tide.

"Yonder lies the lepers' burial-ground," said Sam, and pointed.

"I have heard of them" (she shivered); "and that?"

She nodded towards the saddest ruin in this sad spot, the hull of
what was once a queenly schooner, now slowly rotting to annihilation
beside the further shore. She lay helplessly canted to starboard,
her head pointing up the creek. Her timbers had started