“But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley.”  “Perhaps, if you would...”

“There is nothing I would not do for his happiness,” murmured Lucy.

The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation.  They walked on till the yachts had rounded the point.

“Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?” she asked with some trouble in her voice now that her darling was out of sight.

“I don’t imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you to-night,” Adrian replied gallantly.  “Besides, I must speak for myself.  To achieve the passage to an island is enough for one day.  No necessity exists for any hurry, except in the brain of that impetuous boy.  You must correct it, Mrs. Richard.  Men are made to be managed, and women are born managers.  Now, if you were to let him know that you don’t want to go to-night, and let him guess, after a day or two, that you would very much rather... you might affect a peculiar repugnance.  By taking it on yourself, you see, this wild young man will not require such frightful efforts of persuasion.  Both his father and he are exceedingly delicate subjects, and his father unfortunately is not in a position to be managed directly.  It’s a strange office to propose to you, but it appears to devolve upon you to manage the father through the son.  Prodigal having made his peace, you, who have done all the work from a distance, naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile, knowing it due to you.  I see no other way.  If Richard suspects that his father objects for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities will be continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to worse, and I see no end to it.”

Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say:  Now are you capable of this piece of heroism?  And it did seem hard to her that she should have to tell Richard she shrank from any trial.  But the proposition chimed in with her fears and her wishes:  she thought the wise youth very wise:  the poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and the subtler flattery of making herself in some measure a sacrifice to the home she had disturbed.  She agreed to simulate as Adrian had suggested.

Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came on shore proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven minutes and three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated by his bride with her fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and anxiously questioned about wine.

“Dearest!  Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks we ought not to go immediately—­that is, before he has had some letters, and I feel...  I would so much rather...”

“Ah! that’s it, you coward!” said Richard.  “Well, then, to-morrow.  We had a splendid race.  Did you see us?”

“Oh, yes!  I saw you and was sure my darling would win.”  And again she threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine.  “Mr. Harley must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I’m so silly, I don’t know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can get good wine.  I have seen to the dinner.”