She did it on the impulse; had she consulted her wishes she would rather have seen him at his post, where he seemed in his element, facing the spray and cunningly calculating to get wind and tide in his favour.  Partly with regret she saw him, stripped of his tarpaulin, jump into her boat, as though she had once more to say farewell to sailor Nevil Beauchamp; farewell the bright youth, the hero, the true servant of his country!

That feeling of hers changed when he was on board.  The stirring cordial day had put new breath in him.

‘Should not the flag be dipped?’ he said, looking up at the peak, where the white flag streamed.

‘Can you really mistake compassion for defeat?’ said she, with a smile.

‘Oh! before the wind of course I hadn’t a chance.’

’How could you be so presumptuous as to give chase?  And who has lent you that little cutter?’

Beauchamp had hired her for a month, and he praised her sailing, and pretended to say that the race was not always to the strong in a stiff breeze.

‘But in point’ of fact I was bent on trying how my boat swims, and had no idea of overhauling you.  To-day our salt-water lake is as fine as the Mediterranean.’

’Omitting the islands and the Mediterranean colour, it is.  I have often told you how I love it.  I have landed papa at the Club.  Are you aware that we meet you at Steynham the day after to-morrow?’

’Well, we can ride on the downs.  The downs between three and four of a summer’s morning are as lovely as anything in the world.  They have the softest outlines imaginable . . . and remind me of a friend’s upper lip when she deigns to smile.’

’Is one to rise at that hour to behold the effect?  And let me remind you further, Nevil, that the comparison of nature’s minor work beside her mighty is an error, if you will be poetical.’

She cited a well-known instance of degradation in verse.

But a young man who happens to be intimately acquainted with a certain ‘dark eye in woman’ will not so lightly be brought to consider that the comparison of tempestuous night to the flashing of those eyes of hers topples the scene headlong from grandeur.  And if Beauchamp remembered rightly, the scene was the Alps at night.

He was prepared to contest Cecilia’s judgement.  At that moment the breeze freshened and the canvas lifted from due South the yacht swung her sails to drive toward the West, and Cecilia’s face and hair came out golden in the sunlight.  Speech was difficult, admiration natural, so he sat beside her, admiring in silence.

She said a good word for the smartness of his little yacht.

‘This is my first trial of her,’ said Beauchamp.  ’I hired her chiefly to give Dr. Shrapnel a taste of salt air.  I ’ve no real right to be idling about.  His ward Miss Denham is travelling in Switzerland; the dear old man is alone, and not quite so well as I should wish.  Change of scene will do him good.  I shall land him on the French coast for a couple of days, or take him down Channel.’