f walking across the boundary and strolling into your
greenhouses and deliberately helping myself. And every time I did it I
was certain one of your men would march me out!"

He laughed, but did not tell her that his men had reported the first
episode and that he had instructed them that Mrs. Mortimer and her
friends were to do exactly as they pleased at the Fells. However she
knew it, because a garrulous gardener, proud of his service with Plank,
had informed her.

"Beverly," she said, "you are a dear. If people only knew what I know!"

He began to turn red; she could see it even in the flickering, lamp-shot
darkness. And she teased him for a while, very gently, even tenderly;
and their voices grew lower in a half-serious badinage that ended with a
quiet, indrawn breath, a sigh, and silence.

And now the river swept into view, a darkly luminous sheet set with
reflected stars. Mirrored lights gleamed in it; sudden bright, yellow
flashes zigzagged into its sombre depths; the foliage edged it with
a deeper gloom over which, on the heights, twinkled the multicoloured
lights of Riverside Inn.

Up the broad, gentle grade they sped, curving in and out among the
clumps of trees and shrubbery, then on a level, sweeping in a great
circle up to the steps of the inn.

Now all about them from the brilliantly lighted verandas the gay tumult
broke out like an uproarious welcome after the swift silence of their
journey; the stir of jolly people keen for pleasure; the clatter of
crockery; the coming and going of waiters, of guests, of hansoms,
coupes, victorias, and scores of motor-cars wheeling and turning through
the blinding glare of their own headlights.

Somewhere a gipsy orchestra, full of fitful crescendoes and throbbing
suspensions of caprice, furnished resonant accompaniment to the joyous
clamour; the scent of fountain spray and flowers was in the air.

"I didn't know you had telephoned for a table," said Siward, as a
head-waiter came up smiling and bowing to Plank. "I confess, in the new
excitement of things, I clean forgot it! What a man you are to think of
other people!"

Plank reddened again, muttering something evasive, and went forward with
Leila.

Sylvia, moving leisurely beside Siward who was walking slowly but
confidently without crutches, whispered to him: "I never really liked
Mr. Plank before I understood his attitude toward you."

"He is a man, every inch," said Siward simply.

"I think that general