She walked back at a slow pace, and sung to herself above her darker-flowing thoughts, like the reed-warbler on the branch beside the night-stream; a simple song of a lighthearted sound, independent of the shifting black and grey of the flood underneath.

A step was at her heels.

“I see you have been petting my scapegrace.”

“Mr. Whitford!  Yes; not petting, I hope.  I tried to give him a lecture.  He’s a dear lad, but, I fancy, trying.”

She was in fine sunset colour, unable to arrest the mounting tide.  She had been rowing, she said; and, as he directed his eyes, according to his wont, penetratingly, she defended herself by fixing her mind on Robinson Crusoe’s old goat in the recess of the cavern.

“I must have him away from here very soon,” said Vernon.  “Here he’s quite spoiled.  Speak of him to Willoughby.  I can’t guess at his ideas of the boy’s future, but the chance of passing for the navy won’t bear trifling with, and if ever there was a lad made for the navy, it’s Crossjay.”

The incident of the explosion in the laboratory was new to Vernon.

“And Willoughby laughed?” he said.  “There are sea-port crammers who stuff young fellows for examination, and we shall have to pack off the boy at once to the best one of the lot we can find.  I would rather have had him under me up to the last three months, and have made sure of some roots to what is knocked into his head.  But he’s ruined here.  And I am going.  So I shall not trouble him for many weeks longer.  Dr. Middleton is well?”

“My father is well, yes.  He pounced like a falcon on your notes in the library.”

Vernon came out with a chuckle.

“They were left to attract him.  I am in for a controversy.”

“Papa will not spare you, to judge from his look.”

“I know the look.”

“Have you walked far to-day?”

“Nine and a half hours.  My Flibbertigibbet is too much for me at times, and I had to walk off my temper.”

She cast her eyes on him, thinking of the pleasure of dealing with a temper honestly coltish, and manfully open to a specific.

“All those hours were required?”

“Not quite so long.”

“You are training for your Alpine tour.”

“It’s doubtful whether I shall get to the Alps this year.  I leave the Hall, and shall probably be in London with a pen to sell.”

“Willoughby knows that you leave him?”

“As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below.  He sees a speck or two in the valley.”

“He has not spoken of it.”

“He would attribute it to changes . . .”

Vernon did not conclude the sentence.

She became breathless, without emotion, but checked by the barrier confronting an impulse to ask, what changes?  She stooped to pluck a cowslip.

“I saw daffodils lower down the park,” she said.  “One or two; they’re nearly over.”