Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.

“I’m going to see whose maid it is,” she called back.

Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.

Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.

So this was the result!  His unfortunate future father-in-law was done for.  What a diabolical machine!  What a terrible, swift, relentless answer had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by mistake, summoned his own affinity!  And what an affinity!  A saucy soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the coulisse of a Parisian theater!

Yates looked at Drusilla.  What an awful blow was impending!  She never could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future stepmother in cap and apron!—­his own future stepmother-in-law!

And in the misery of that moment’s realization John Chillingham Yates showed the material of which he was constructed.

“Dear,” he said gently.

“Do you mean me?” asked Drusilla, looking up in frank surprise.

And at the same time she saw on his face a look which she had never before encountered there.  It was the shadow of trouble; and it drew her to her feet instinctively.

“What is it, Jack?” she asked.

She had never before called him anything but Mr. Yates.

“What is it?” she repeated, turning away beside him along the leafy path; and with every word another year seemed, somehow, to be added to her youth.  “Has anything happened, Jack?  Are you unhappy—­or ill?”

He did not speak; she walked beside him, regarding him with wistful eyes.

So there was more of love than happiness, after all; she began to half understand it in a vague way as she watched his somber face.  There certainly was more of love than a mere lazy happiness; there was solicitude and warm concern, and desire to comfort, to protect.

“Jack,” she said tremulously.

He turned and took her unresisting hands.  A quick thrill shot through her.  Yes, there was more to love than she had expected.

“Are you unhappy?” she asked.  “Tell me.  I can’t bear to see you this way.  I—­I never did—­before.”

“Will you love me; Drusilla?”

“Yes—­yes, I will, Jack.”

“Dearly?”

“I do—­dearly.”  The first blush that ever tinted her cheek spread and deepened.

“Will you marry me, Drusilla?”

“Yes....  You frighten me.”

She trembled, suddenly, in his arms.  Surely there were more things to love than she had dreamed of in her philosophy.  She looked up as he bent nearer, understanding that she was to be kissed, awaiting the event which suddenly loomed up freighted with terrific significance.

There was a silence, a sob.

“Jack—­darling—­I—­I love you so!”

Flavilla was sketching on her camp-stool when they returned.