person who was reading a newspaper by the light of the brilliant lamp on the wall.

She saw the face distinctly--clean shaven, the powerful heavy features so often associated with great lawyers.  He was reading intently, and his soft hat was pushed backward from his eyes.  Pamela opened her lips in a little gasp of astonishment.  The last person in the world she had thought of!

It was Sir Marmaduke Shard.  Alone.  But he had not been alone when the car passed her the first time.

Pamela stared after the receding car till it was lost in the dusk; then she went on again at her best pace, very much surprised, for it would really seem that the great Sir Marmaduke had actually brought someone to Bell Bay, left them behind somewhere, and gone back to Salterne.  It really was exciting, because there was nowhere to come to except his own house, and had he been going there he would surely have chosen the direct road.

Moreover, to leave again at once, like this!  Pamela could find no answer to the riddle.

When she reached home, nobody questioned her lateness, because they were all, so to speak, rather busy being low-spirited--a condition that nearly always takes people’s attention off others.

Poor Adrian was very sorry for himself; very sorry indeed; and there was much excuse for him.  It seemed likely that there would be no more sailing in the beloved _Messenger_.

Christobel, on her part, was passionately sorry for Adrian. She understood fully what such a blow meant to him who found more delight in sailing than in anything else in life.

Mrs. Romilly was grieving for both of them, but as usual was most absorbed in trying to think of a way out of the wood, and how to substitute something that would do--nearly as well.

Finally, there was Miss Violet Chance--nicknamed the "Floweret" in happier moments, by the way--who paralysed Mrs. Romilly’s efforts and made matters worse by bright endeavours at dispersing the cloud.

"After all," said the Floweret, "what _is_ a yacht?  Surely we can find something quite as jolly!  What about rounders? Wouldn’t it soon be good weather for croquet?"  She suggested to Adrian a collection of moths, and asked him where he had put the stamps he had been so proud of the year before last?

Adrian said:"I’ve got them 

 Prev. P 10/404 next