“Strike your colours, ladies, you that sport the crimson and purple!” called out a laughing voice from one of the skiffs.  “Oxford blue wins.”

Lord Hartledon arrived last.  He did not get up for some minutes after the rest were in.  In short, he was distanced.

“Hart has hurt his arm as well as his foot,” observed one of the others, as he came alongside.  “That’s why he got distanced.”

“No, it was not,” dissented Lord Hartledon, looking up from his skiff at the crowd of fair faces bent down upon him.  “My arm is all right; it only gave me a few twinges when I first started.  My oar fouled, and I could not get right again; so, finding I had lost too much ground, I gave up the contest.  Anne, had I known I should disgrace my colours, I would not have given them to you.”

“Miss Ashton loses, and Maude wins!” cried the countess-dowager, executing a little dance of triumph.  “Maude is the only one who wears the Oxford blue.”

It was true.  The young Oxonian was a retiring and timid man, and none had voluntarily assumed his colours.  But no one heeded the countess-dowager.

“You are like a child, Hartledon, denying that your arm’s damaged!” exclaimed Captain Dawkes.  “I know it is:  I could see it by the way you struck your oar all along.”

What feeling is it in man that prompts him to disclaim physical pain?—­make light of personal injury?  Lord Hartledon’s ankle was swelling, at the bottom of the boat; and without the slightest doubt his arm was paining him, although perhaps at the moment not very considerably.  But he maintained his own assertions, and protested his arm was as sound as the best arm present.  “I could go over the work again with pleasure,” cried he.

“Nonsense, Hart!  You could not.”

“And I will go over it,” he added, warming with the opposition.  “Who’ll try his strength with me?  There’s plenty of time before dinner.”

“I will,” eagerly spoke young Carteret, who had been, as was remarked, one of those on land, and was wild to be handling the oars.  “If Dawkes will let me have his skiff, I’ll bet you ten to five you are distanced again, Hartledon.”

Perhaps Lord Hartledon had not thought his challenge would be taken seriously.  But when he saw the eager, joyous look of the boy Carteret—­he was not yet nineteen—­the flushed pleasure of the beardless face, he would not have retracted it for the world.  He was just as good-natured as Percival Elster.

“Dawkes will let you have his skiff, Carteret.”

Captain Dawkes was exceedingly glad to be rid of it.  Good boatman though he was, he rarely cared to spend his strength superfluously, when nothing was to be gained by it, and had no fancy to row his skiff back to its moorings, as most of the others were already doing with theirs.  He leaped out.

“Any one but you, Hartledon, would be glad to come out of that tilting thing, and enjoy a rest, and get your face cool,” cried the countess-dowager.