“Who else?” he took her up, and with a queer flicker—­if of a smile, then one with a keenish edge to it—­in his eyes and about his mouth.

“For my father,” Damaris answered.  “It was a stupid mistake, because he is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any real reason to expect him home for several days yet.”

“But in this deceptive light,” Faircloth took her up again, while—­as she could not help observing—­that flicker became more pronounced.  It seemed silently to laugh and to mock.—­“Oh! to be sure that accounts for your mistake as to my identity.  One sees how it might very well come about.”

He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the low wet sky.

“At night all cats are grey, aren’t they,” he went on, “little ones as well as big?  And it’s close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.  So close on it, that—­though personally I’m in no hurry—­I ought to get you back to The Hard, or there’ll be a regular hue and cry after you—­rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any notion of their duty.”

“I am quite ready,” Damaris said.

She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with this masterful stranger—­who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.  Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to deal with him.

“But hardly as you are,” he commented, on her announcement she was ready.  “Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first.”  And this he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris’ lips began to quiver, very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight laying hold on her.

“I can’t find them,” she pitifully declared.  “I have looked and looked, but I can’t find them anywhere.  I left my things just here.  Can anyone have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar?  It is so mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome.  I should have gone home long ago, before the rain began, if I could have found them.”

And with that, the whole little story—­childish or idyllic as you please—­of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all wonder and all beauty, got itself—­not without eloquent passages—­quickly yet gravely told.  For the young man appeared to derive considerable pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her too—­still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were of interest and of value.

“And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth,” Damaris said in conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture.  “And I am very tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once.”