“Oh no, I must.  This is the short way.”

Her hands trembled so that she could hardly undo the private fastening of Miss Mohun’s garden, and she began to dash down the cliff steps.  Just at the turn, where the stair-way was narrowest, Lance heard her exclaim, and saw that she had met face to face no other than Captain Armytage himself.

“Oh! is it?” and she so tottered on the rocky step that the hand he had put out in greeting became a support, and a tender one, as Lance said (perhaps with a little malice)—-

“We heard that the Buccaneer Captain had come to grief.”

“I?” he laughed; and Gillian shook herself up, asking—-

“Weren’t you run down?” seeing even as she spoke that not a drop of wet was traceable.

“Me!  What! did you think I was going to peril my life in a ’long-shore concern like this?” said he, with a merry laugh, betraying infinite pleasure.

“But did nothing happen?  Nobody drowned?” she asked, half disappointed.

“Not a mouse!  A little chap, one of the fairies yesterday, tumbled off the sea-wall where he had no business to be, but he swam like a cork.  We threw him a rope and hauled him up.”

Wherewith he gave his arm to Gillian, who was still trembling, and clasped it so warmly that Lance thought it expedient to pass them as soon as possible and continue his journey on the staircase, giving a low whistle of amusement, and pausing to look out on the beautiful blue bay, crowded with the white sails of yachts and pleasure-boats, with brilliant festoons of little flags, and here and there the feather of steam from a launch.  He could look, for he was feeling lighter of heart now that the communication was over.

Perhaps Lance would have been edified could he have heard the colloquy—-

“Gillian! you do care for me after all?”

Gillian tried to take her arm away and to say, “Common humanity,” but she did not get the words out.

“No, no!” he said.  “Confess that if it had been that fisher-boy, you would not be here now!” and he kept tight the arm that she was going to take away.  Her face was in a flame.

“Well, well; and if-—if it wasn’t, you need not make such a fuss about it.”

“Not when it is the first ray of hope you have afforded me, for the only joy of my life?”

“I never meant to afford—-”

“But you could not help.”

“Oh, don’t!  I never meant it.  Oh dear!  I never meant to be worried about troublesome things like this till I had got older, and learnt a great deal more; and now you want to upset it all.  It is very—-very disagreeable.”

“But you need not be upset!” poor Ernley Armytage pleaded.  “Remember, I am going away for three years.  May I not take hope with me?”

Gillian paused.

“Well,” again she said, “I do like you—-I mean, I don’t mind you as much as most people; you have done something, and you have some sense.”