Now Tregurtha, though he had started a quarter of an hour after his friend, and taken the longer route by the circumambient road, instead of going across country, had--for some reason inexplicable except to very young people--arrived long before Roscoria, and was disposed to be foolishly jocose upon the subject. Louis checked this tendency in his friend, though with some difficulty; and Tregurtha grew somber as he recounted the boredom of his experiences over a set of tennis, wherein his antagonists had dawdled about without any manner of spirit, whilst, as he himself was the best player on the ground, his partner naturally was the worst. Observing that Roscoria grew lax in his attention to these plaints, Tregurtha went and hovered aimlessly around a tea-table. He was speedily dislodged from this refuge by the hostess herself, who stormed up to him with a rustle of silk akin in sound to the spray of a mighty cataract, and an all-conquering inflation of demeanor peculiar to the grandees of Devonshire and Cornwall, and, seizing him by the arm, bore down upon the other end of the long _salon_ with him in tow. Tregurtha was a Cornishman himself, so he was equal to the occasion--drew up his height and adopted an attitude of breezy and elegant ease as he listened to Mrs. Tremenheere lisping something about a "Miss ----" (he could not catch the name), "introduce--very clever--not my style--pretty though----" etc., until she stormed off again, leaving Tregurtha anchored opposite a small but rather stately foreign-looking damsel, of pleasing exterior, with a pair of great soft blue-black eyes, which were gazing up at him with an expression of absolute fright. The occasion did not seem to warrant this nervousness, and Tregurtha was just thinking to himself, "What a shame to bring her out just yet! she looks so young and shy," when the maiden before him turned hastily round and slipped out by the French window on to the lawn, laughing consumedly. That laugh! he knew it. Dick pursued in hot curiosity and identified her. This was she--the heroine of the stockingless episode--this was Thetis--this was Arletta of Falaise. "I think we have met before," quoth he, not without relish of the joke. But the lady of the hyacinthine eyes was too deeply conscious of that fact to enunciate a syllable. So there they two stood together on that almost deserted lawn (let us not be compelled to explain that every one else was drinking claret-cup!), under the heat of that summer sun, for several silent moments; and the man was losing his heart. There was magic in the air that afternoon, for out came Roscoria presently (looking very much _en l'air_), and with him a tall, fair-haired woman, who only wanted wings. Tregurtha forgot himself in an instant, and, laying his hand on Louis' shoulder, led him up to Thetis, impressively and proudly observing: "Miss ----, allow me to introduce my friend" (with emphasis) "Louis Roscoria!"