Then, before them all, he took her hand, and, bending, held it to his lips.

“Thank you, Hilary!” he said very softly.

In the privacy of her own cabin Hilary removed her tatters and cooled her tingling cheeks.  She and her brother were engaged to dine at Dick’s bungalow that night, but an overwhelming shyness possessed her, and at the last moment she persuaded Bertie to go alone.  It was plain that for some reason Bertie was hugely amused, and she thought it rather heartless of him.

She dined alone on the house-boat with her face to the river.  Her fright had made her somewhat nervous, and she was inclined to start at every sound.  When the meal was over she went up to her favourite retreat on the upper deck.  A golden twilight still lingered in the air, and the river was mysteriously calm.  But the girl’s heart was full of a heavy restlessness.  Each time she heard a punt-pole striking on the bed of the river she raised her head to look.

He came at last—­the man for whom her heart waited.  He was punting rapidly down-stream, and she could not see his face.  Yet she knew him, by the swing of his arms, the goodly strength of his muscles,—­and by the suffocating beating of her heart.  She saw that one hand was bandaged, and a passionate feeling that was almost rapture thrilled through and through her at the sight.  Then he shot beyond her vision, and she heard the punt bump against the house-boat.

“It’s a gentleman to see you, miss,” said the Badger, thrusting a grey and grinning visage up the stairs.

“Ask him to come up!” said Hilary, steadying her voice with an effort.

A moment later she rose to receive the man she loved.  And her heart suddenly ceased to beat.

“You!” she gasped, in a choked whisper.

He came straight forward.  The last light of the day shone on his smooth brown face, with its steady eyes and strong mouth.

“Yes,” he said, and still through his quiet tones she seemed to hear a faint echo of the subdued twang which dwellers in the Far West sometimes acquire.  “I, John Merrivale, late of California, beg to render to you, Hilary St. Orme, in addition to my respectful homage, that freedom for which you have not deigned to ask.”

She stared at him dumbly, one hand pressed against her breast.  The ripple of the river ran softly through the silence.  Slowly at last Merrivale turned to go.

And then sharply, uncertainly, she spoke.

“Wait, please!” she said.

She moved close to him and laid her hand on the flower-bedecked balustrade, trembling very much.

“Why have you done this?” Her quivering voice sounded like a prayer.

He hesitated, then answered her quietly through the gloom.

“I did it because I loved you.”

“And what did you hope to gain by it?” breathed Hilary.

He did not answer, and she drew a little nearer as though his silence reassured her.