y-carriage with the solicitude of
a mother fixing up a young baby going out with its nurse. He insisted
that she should wear a shawl over her linen jacket, and brought forth
an armful of softest WOOL, Indian wove.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, fondling it, for she loved fine
fabrics.

"Never mind," said he. "Put it on."

"I am suspicious of these shawls and fallals that Bundaboo seems full
of. Who is the hidden lady?"

He only smiled at her.

"Ah, godpapa, you spoil me!"

She drew the wrap about her, and he assisted to adjust it, with gentle
skill. Then he turned abruptly to Carey, as to a groom.

"See that she doesn't throw that off. It will be chilly presently. No,
she'd better drive--she knows the road. But take care of her.
Good-night."

"Isn't he an old dear?" said Deb to Carey, as they drove off. "He has
been a second father to me ever since I was a child."

She did not hurry the ponies, being anxious not to appear to be tearing
after her offended swain.

"The evening is the pleasantest time to be out, this weather," she
said, lolling back in her seat. "And I'm sure I don't want to look at
dinner after such a lunch as I have eaten. I don't know how you feel."

"I feel the same," he assured her, with truth.

So, for her own purposes, she made their drive half as long again as it
need have been. And was so friendly, so free, so intimate!--leading
that poor innocent to the belief that his great rival was already
virtually out of his way. He was an unsophisticated sailor-lad, who,
with that rival's help, had reached a certain stage and crisis--another
one--of his man's life; and--let us be honest in our diagnosis--the
bubbles of Mr Thornycroft's fine champagne still ran in his blood and
brightened his brain, lifting him above the prosaic ground-level where
a craven timidity would have smothered him. Not touching the balance of
his wits, be it understood; just heartening him--no more.

Twice and thrice she branched off from the road to show him something
that could well have waited for another day. She was imprudent enough
to introduce him to so sentimental a spot as the family
cemetery--established at a time when there were only Dalzells and
Pennycuicks to feed it. "Their shepherds were killed by the blacks,"
said Deb, as she pushed the ponies up to the wall, and he rose in the
carriage to look over the top, "and they buried them here, marking the
place with a pile of stones. There were other