A soft wind, meanwhile, caressed him, as hesitating, uncertain what to do next, he glanced out over the smiling sea and then back at the delicate shore line, the white house, the huge evergreen trees and brilliant flower garden.  A glamour covered the scene.  It was lovely, intimately, radiantly lovely as he had lately declared it.  Yet just now he grew distrustful, as though its fair seeming cloaked some subtle trickery and deceit.  He began to wish he had not undertaken this expedition to Deadham; but gone straight from the normal, solidly engrained philistinism of dear old Canton Magna to join his ship.  In coming here he had, to put it vulgarly, bitten off more than he could chew.  For the place and its inhabitants seemed to have a disintegrating effect on him.  Never in all his life had he been such a prey to exterior influences, been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus.  It was absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but fear the Archdeacon’s well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in process of leading him a very questionable little dance.

Reaction, however, set in before long, as with so lively, light-hearted a temperament, it was bound to do, the healthy scepticism, healthy optimism of untried three-and-twenty rising to the surface buoyant as a cork.

Tom Verity shook himself, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, settled his tie, hitched up the waist of his trousers, stamping to get them into place, laughed a little, calling himself every sort of silly ass, and then swung away down the side of the long ridge in pursuit of Damaris.  He acknowledged his treatment of her had been lacking in chivalry.  He hadn’t shown himself altogether considerate or even kind.  But she challenged him—­perhaps unconsciously—­and once or twice had come near making him feel small.—­Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour!  Now however he would sail on another tack.  Would placate, discreetly cherish her until she couldn’t but be softened and consent to make it up.  After all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant—­such at least was his experience—­where a personable youth is concerned.  It only needed a trifle of refined cajolery to make everything smooth and to bring her round.

He overtook the fugitive as she reached the low wooden jetty crawling, like some giant but rather dilapidated black many-legged insect, out over the stream.  Its rows of solidly driven piles were intact, but the staging they supported had suffered damage from the rush of river floods, let alone from neglect and age.  Handrails were broken down, planks rotted and wrenched away leaving gaps through which the cloudy greenish blue water could be seen as it purred and chuckled beneath.  Here, at the river level, it was hot to the point of sultriness, the air heavy, even stagnant, since the Bar shut off the southerly breeze.