“Well, praps he is and praps he ain’t; anyway, it isn’t my affair, and sixpence is sixpence.”

All of this the unfortunate Mr. Davies overheard, and it did not add to his equanimity.

“Now, sir, if you please,” said Edward sternly, as he pulled the little boat up to the edge of the breakwater.  A vision of Mrs. Thomas shot into Owen’s mind.  If the boatman did not believe in him, what chance had he with the housekeeper?  He wished he had brought the lawyer down with him, and then he wished that he was back in the sugar brig.

“Now, sir,” said Edward still more sternly, putting down his hesitation to an impostor’s consciousness of guilt.

“Um!” said Owen to the young lady, “I beg your pardon.  I don’t even know your name, and I am sure I have no right to ask it, but would you mind rowing across with me?  It would be so kind of you; you might introduce me to the housekeeper.”

Again Beatrice laughed the merry laugh of girlhood; she was too young to be conscious of any impropriety in the situation, and indeed there was none.  But her sense of humour told her that it was funny, and she became possessed with a not unnatural curiosity to see the thing out.

“Oh, very well,” she said, “I will come.”

The boat was pushed off and very soon they reached the stone quay that bordered the harbour of the Castle, about which a little village of retainers had grown up.  Seeing the boat arrive, some of these people sauntered out of the cottages, and then, thinking that a visitor had come, under the guidance of Miss Beatrice, to look at the antiquities of the Castle, which was the show place of the neighbourhood, sauntered back again.  Then the pair began the zigzag ascent of the rock mountain, till at last they stood beneath the mighty mass of building, which, although it was hoary with antiquity, was by no means lacking in the comforts of modern civilization, the water, for instance, being brought in pipes laid beneath the sea from a mountain top two miles away on the mainland.

“Isn’t there a view here?” said Beatrice, pointing to the vast stretch of land and sea.  “I think, Mr. Davies, that you have the most beautiful house in the whole world.  Your great-uncle, who died a year ago, spent more than fifty thousand pounds on repairing and refurbishing it, they say.  He built the big drawing-room there, where the stone is a little lighter; it is fifty-five feet long.  Just think, fifty thousand pounds!”

“It is a large sum,” said Owen, in an unimaginative sort of way, while in his heart he wondered what on earth he should do with this white elephant of a mediaeval castle, and its drawing room fifty-five feet long.

“He does not seem much impressed,” thought Beatrice to herself, as she tugged away at the postern bell; “I think he must be stupid.  He looks stupid.”

Presently the door was opened by an active-looking little old woman with a high voice.