‘Hilda, suppose they should never come back!’ and I could not say the supposition was a pleasant one. She had been standing between Sophy Markham and myself, but as she said the words, she slipped round my back and linked her arm in mine on the other side. Miss Markham, for a wonder, was silent, but Mrs. Carolus was plaintively trying to make her spouse partake her girlish fears, and he was ridiculing them with a kind of rough good sense that made me laugh. Under cover of their expostulations with one another, a mouth approached my ear on the side left vacant by Ange, and I heard a voice say gently: ‘My own darling! How much I love you!’ The announcement took me so completely by surprise, that, for the moment, I imagined it had proceeded from Charlie Sandilands, and it was quite a mercy that, under cover of the darkness, I did not turn round and smartly box his ears in return for his impudence. But before I had had time to prepare the weapon of chastisement, the speaker continued, still in the same soft tones: ‘What a nuisance it is having to play propriety before all these bores! How I long to be alone with you again, and able to tell you what I feel!’ Before this sentence was concluded, I had recognised the voice as that of Cave Charteris, and was bristling with indignation. ‘What do you mean by speaking to me like that?’ I said angrily. ‘Good God, Hilda!’ he rejoined, ‘is it you?’ ‘Yes, it is I! Who did you take me for?’ ‘Then—where—where—’ he stammered, in order to give himself time to think of what to say, ‘where is Miss Markham?’ We had both raised our voices in our mutual surprise, and his last question was overheard. ‘Here I am, Mr. Charteris!’ ejaculated the fair Sophy, from his other side—I know she had shifted her quarters in hopes of extracting some familiarity from him before the lights came back. ‘Close to you—see!’ The order to ‘see’ was apparently accompanied by a playful pinch, for Charteris gave a sudden yell, and a step forward that might have sent him over the precipice. ‘Do be careful, Miss Markham,’ I exclaimed, with an expression of annoyance, ‘and keep your facetiæ until we stand on safer ground. You might have caused Mr. Charteris to make a false step.’ ‘Oh, you needn’t be so alarmed, Miss Marsh,’ she answered meaningly; ‘I assure you I am quite as anxious for Mr. Charteris’s safety as you can be, and I should think you had quite enough to do to look after Mr. Sandilands without troubling yourself about other people!’