‘And my proposal is that you come with me, at least as far as the unpronounceable meeting of the water-lanes; start me on my downward spongy way to the sea, and then, unless I descend too quickly from the Gros Nez cliffs, I shall have a fair chance of finding my road home.’ To an agonised wife! It might be--so mixed is human happiness, thought Marjorie ironically--to the least little domestic lecture on the subject of late hours. ‘Feminine caprice,’ she observed gravely, ‘is in your favour for once, Mr. Arbuthnot. I will look after your interests as far as Tibot. After that, your fate will be in your own hands. On the outside chance of your getting back alive to your hotel, I may as well present you with some rather better flowers.’ She flitted about, moth-fashion, from one garden-plot to another, ever rifling the choicest and sweetest bloom of each for her basket. Afterwards, the lodge gates passed, she accompanied Geoffrey across a strip of common land and down a few hundred yards of darksome lane to the Hüets, from which point the trickle of a little moorland stream guided them to Tibot. Here, emerging into such light as the young moon yielded, the moment came for bidding good-night. And here an exceedingly delicate question in social tactics presented itself with force to Marjorie’s attention. What decorous but strictly indirect message ought to accompany her gift of flowers to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife? ‘You don’t mind carrying things, I hope, sir, as long as they are not from the butcher’s, or done up in a brown paper parcel? Guernsey is not Cambridge, you know. Grandpapa and I carry everything on the end of our walking stick, from a conger eel downwards.’ ‘I will carry a conger eel for you, any day, with delight,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I shall remember that speech. I shall present you with a conger eel four feet long, in the market, and watch to see you carry him to your hotel. To-night I only want you to take these flowers for me to--to some one in the town,’ observed Marjorie, with staid composure. But she was in no courageous mood, really. She listened as though she would ask counsel of it to the familiar little black-veined moor stream, eddying away with chill clear voice to the sea. ‘You have only to command me,’ said Geoffrey, with an absurd, a reasonless sense of personal disappointment, ‘and I obey. The address of your friend is----’ ‘You will have no difficulty about the address. Indeed, I am afraid,’ stammered Marjorie, ‘that at present, for another few days, I have scarcely a right to speak of the person as my friend. The difficulty is, sir, how will you carry the flowers? In your hands, you say! A man who would climb Gros Nez cliffs must pretty nearly hang on by his eyelashes, like the heroes in Jules Verne’s stories; at times he wants as firm a grip, I can tell you, as all his ten fingers can give.’