"Probably she wouldn't care to give her true name at the hotel until she had been to see General Talland. The marriage had been kept secret, and nobody in Chagmouth knew about it. No doubt she had intended to go to The Warren and show her child to its grandfather. But General Talland had started for the West Indies. It was perhaps the news of his absence, and the consequent failure of her errand, that brought on the heart attack that caused her sudden collapse." "So Chagmouth belongs to Bevis," repeated Merle wonderingly. "The house, and the grounds, and the woods, and the shooting, and the farms, and the town are Bevis's. It's like a fairy tale!" But the heir to all the Talland Estate lay between life and death. CHAPTER XXI The Floral Festival Bevis pulled round after all. As Dr. Tremayne had said, he had youth and a strong constitution on his side. The new method of treatment seemed a miracle, and perhaps also the interview with Tudor, by settling the disturbance in his mind, allowed the medicines to have a fair chance. Nature reasserted herself, drove out baneful microbes, and set that wonderful instrument of hers, the human body, once more in working order. As soon as the fever left him Bevis picked up very fast. There was so much to get well for. The papers, hidden away so long in Mrs. Jarvis's cottage, established without a doubt his claim to the Talland property, and when the necessary formalities could be gone through he would become its legal owner. Naturally the affair was the talk of Chagmouth, and Bevis would have been overwhelmed with visitors and congratulations had not Mrs. Penruddock acted dragon, and kept away all callers except those who had a special permit from the Doctor. Under her excellent nursing he gained strength rapidly, and by the time St. Gervan's Day came round he looked almost his old self again. The floral festival held every year in honour of the patron saint of Chagmouth was an extremely ancient custom dating back probably to dim ages before the dawn of history. The antiquarians of the neighbourhood said it was either a survival from the Romans, or more likely still a relic of Druidism and sun worship. Christianity, finding pagan rites had always heralded the beginning of the summer, had adopted the feast and dedicated it to St. Gervan, an obscure Cornish missionary whose very legend was forgotten. Nothing is so persistent, however, as the survival of an old village fete, and for hundreds of years Chagmouth people, when the anniversary occurred, had decked their boats with flowers, and rowed across the harbour, and round the point to the little old church on the rock. Ages ago Druids had no doubt invoked the heavens to send favourable harvests, in mediaeval times the parish priest had probably blessed the fishing boats according to the custom which still obtains at a few places in Brittany, but these points in the old ceremony were now lost, and it had simply become a village holiday.