"I should have thought my mother might have sent Pasqualino," he observed. The girl laughed. "Oh, she wanted to, but I said I would go instead. You see, Cousin Marion and Helena were getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them with my own calm, but they wouldn't catch it. So I thought a little walk would be pleasant." "Oh, was Helena frightened?" asked Archie rather greedily. "Yes. So was Cousin Marion. I wasn't." "Then you were beastly unsympathetic. I had an awful shave getting into the harbour," remarked Archie. "But you knew what you were about, and I didn't, nor did Helena. So I preferred to have confidence in you and go for a walk, rather than observe you in what looked remarkably like danger." Archie had walked up from the landing-stage with his shoes and his coat under his arm. The coat was too wet to put on, so he dusted his feet with it, and resumed his shoes. "Oh, a ripping afternoon," he said again. The sound of the clanging gate into the Castello was heard out in the garden, and as they walked up the dim stone-flagged passage that led out into it, another girl came running in. She, like her sister, was tall and slight, but there the resemblance altogether ended. A delicate, small-featured face, entirely feminine, gleamed below yellow hair; her eyes, set rather wide apart, giving her an adorably childish look, opened very widely below their dark eyelashes. Beside her, Jessie looked somewhat like a well-bred plough-boy. "Oh, Archie!" she cried. "How horribly rash of you! Your mother and I have had a terrible half-hour." "I bring you cigarettes to soothe your disordered nerves," said Archie sententiously. "I am happy to say that they are dry, though I am not." Jessie had walked on, with that pleasant expression on her face that might or might not be a smile, and the two were left alone for a moment. "As if I cared about the cigarettes," she said. "You did this morning. But you weren't really anxious, were you?" "Indeed I was. You were naughty to sail back in this gale. Do be good now and change your clothes at once. I will bring you some fresh tea into the garden. Cousin Marion and I have had tea. We drank cup after cup to fortify ourselves, and looked over the wall at your boat between each sip. Then we trembled and had another sip. Before you got past that horrid rock, we had drained the teapot and broken our chairs with our tremblings."