“Thank you, thank you!” he said, with so much of admiration and gratitude in his voice, that, as if to apologise for it, he said:  “I’m fond of music.  But I’m forgetting your tea!  Shall we pull back to the Ferry Hotel and get some?”

“I’m in your hands,” she replied, languidly.

He turned-the boat and pulled back along the centre of the lake in silence.  Suddenly she bent forward.

“There is something in the water,” she said; “something alive.”

“It’s a—­yes, it’s a dog,” he said.  “That is what you saw drop over the steamer.  By George! the poor little chap looks in distress:  seems as if he were nearly done.  Can you steer?” he asked, sharply.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, languidly.  “Why?”

“Because I’m going for him, and it will help me if you can steer straight for him.  He looks nearly played out.”

“Why should you trouble—­it’s a long way off; it will be drowned before you can get to it,” she said.

“I’ll have to go for it anyway,” he said, cheerfully; and he began to row hard.

Distance is deceptive on a lake, and the dog was farther off than they thought; but Stafford put his back into it as hard as he had done in his racing days, and Maude Falconer leant back and watched him with interest, and something even stronger than interest, in her masked eyes.  He had turned up the sleeves of his flannel shirt, and the muscles on his arms were standing out under the strain, his lips were set tightly, and there was the man’s frown of determination on his brow.

“It has gone down:  it’s no use,” she said.  “You may as well stop and rest.”

He looked over his shoulder.

“No!  He has come up again!” he exclaimed:  it was noticeable that he called the dog “he,” while she spoke of it as “it.”  “We shall get him in time.  Keep the boat straight!”

The words were uttered in a tone of command, and they moved her as the touch of his hand had done; and she set her mind upon the task as she had never before set it upon anything.

Reaching well forward, pulling with the long, steady stroke of the practised oarsman, Stafford sent the boat along like an arrow, and presently he drove it up to the spot where the dog strove in its death straggle.

It was a tiny black-and-tan terrier, and Stafford, as he looked over his shoulder, saw the great eyes turned to him with a piteous entreaty that made his heart ache.

“Turn the boat—­quick!” he cried; and as the skiff slid alongside the dog, he swooped it up.

The mite gave a little gasping cry like a child, and closing its eyes sank into Stafford’s arms with a shudder.

“Is it dead?” asked Maude Falconer, looking not at the dog but at Stafford, for his face, which had been red with exertion a moment ago, had become suddenly pale.

“I don’t know—­no!” he said, absently, all his thoughts centered on the dog.