The yacht had throbbed into movement.  The ropes were being flung aboard.  They were steaming away, and a great blast went up from the siren as they drew from the quay.

Everywhere was tumult, rejoicing.  People were shouting, talking, laughing, waving hats and handkerchiefs.  The whole world seemed a buzz of merriment, and out of the very thick of it, Toby’s voice, small and tense, spoke into Bunny’s ear.

“Let’s get away!  Let’s go to Lord Saltash, and—­and—­and congratulate.”

Her hand was on his arm.  She pulled at it urgently, insistently.  And Bunny went with her, moved again—­he knew not wherefore—­by that feeling that something had frightened her.

He grasped her hand and made a way for her through the crowd.  They went to the laughing group in the bows.  Saltash was standing close to Maud.  He was making some careless jest to her, when suddenly he turned and found the boy and girl hand in hand behind him.

His swift look flashed over them, and then in his sudden way he put a hand on the shoulder of each.  It was a lightning touch, and he laughed oddly as he did it, as a man laughs who covers some hidden hurt.

“We came to congratulate,” said Bunny.  “Good luck to her!”

And Saltash, with his royal air of graciousness, made light reply.

“I thank you for your congratulations, my children; but may the luck be yours!  I see it coming.”

And with that lightly he moved away among his guests, leaving a trail of merriment wherever he went, save where the boy and girl stood together in the bows in a silence that neither seemed able to break.

CHAPTER VII

SURRENDER

That night Fairharbour Bay looked like a velvet bed on which glittered many jewels. The Blue Moon, lighted from bows to stern lay in the centre, and from her deck there went up showers of coloured rockets that fell like burning rain upon the sea.  There was a string band on board, and the strains floated across the water as echoes from another world—­a wonder-world of soft melodies and laughing voices and lightly splashing oars.

Toby sat in the stern of a boat with a single rower in front of her, and trailed her fingers through the magic water.  She was bare-headed, and the breeze of the summer night stirred tenderly the golden ringlets that clustered about her bow.  Her face, seen now and then in the flare of the rockets, had a strange look, almost a look of dread.  Her blue eyes were very wide open, like the eyes of a startled child.

She spoke scarcely at all, and Bunny did not urge her.  Only as he rowed, he watched her with grave determination on his boyish face.  He had claimed her as his partner early in the evening, and she had made no attempt to thwart him; but something in that half scared silence of hers moved him very deeply.  His own was protective, resolutely reassuring.