“Amber,” he said in a whisper which had something of shyness lingering in its tremulous emotion. “Amber, I lay it all at your feet.” She allowed him to catch her hand--she was too puzzled to keep it from him. Was this his way of saying good-bye, she wondered. “I lay everything here at your feet; if you like it, it is all yours,” he cried. “Don’t be a goose, Guy,” she said snatching her hand away. “What on earth would I do with such a place as this?” “Come to it--be the chatelaine of my castle, reign here, Amber, as you do in my heart. I got the place cheap; but I shall spend money on it--by degrees--to make it worthy of your acceptance, Amber, my own--my----” At this point a rat put in an appearance at the side of the door and rushed out through the open window. “Was it for this you asked me to come here?” cried Amber, bravely ignoring what other girls might have regarded as a legitimate interruption of the scene. “Yes, you asked me to come here in order to make your absurd proposal to me. You should be ashamed of yourself, when you knew so well that I thought of our friendship as wholly disinterested. If I had, for one moment----” “I thought you saw it coming,” said he hanging his head. “What coming?” “This.” “You have given me a blow, Guy--I thought that you were a sincere friend.” “So I was--I am. But I can’t help loving you all the same. Great Queen of Sheba, you don’t fancy that what you call Platonic friendship can go on beyond a certain point. It’s all very well for a beginning; it makes a good enough basis for a start--but, hang it all, you don’t think that a chap with any self-respect would be content--when there’s a pretty girl like you--the prettiest and the dearest girl that ever lived---- Who the mischief is bawling out there?” “They are calling to me from the launch,” said Amber. “It is just as well. Guy, I am not angry--only disappointed. You have disappointed me. I thought that you at least--they are getting impatient. I must go.” She hastened away to the open window and he followed her with a face of melancholy so congenial with the prevailing note of the house that an artist would have been delighted to include him in a picture of “The Gables from the River.” She ran through the long grass and reached the launch so breathless that she could with difficulty explain that she had been watching a rat. Every one in the boat knew that Guy had been asking her to marry him. Chaps only have that hangdog expression, worn with some distinction by Guy Overton, when they have been proposing to girls, the two-month husband explained to his wife. A girl only shakes hands with a man so cordially as Amber had shaken hands with Guy, when she has just refused to marry him, Josephine knew. And the boatman shifted the lever. CHAPTER XXIII