Isola looked at the clock on the chimney-piece--a gilt horse-shoe with onyx nails; one of her wedding presents. It was early yet--only half-past nine. Lord Lostwithiel had talked about calling to inquire after her health. She felt overpowered with shyness at the thought of seeing him again, alone--with no stately Mrs. Mayne to take the edge off a _tête-à-tête_. Anything to escape such an ordeal! There was her boat--that boat of which she was perfect mistress, and in which she went for long, dawdling expeditions towards Fowey or Lostwithiel with only Tim for her companion--Tim, who was the best of company, in almost perpetual circulation between stem and stern, balancing himself in perilous places every now and then, to bark furiously at imaginary foes in slowly passing fishermen’s boats. “Have you any fancy about lunch, ma’am?” asked Tabitha, lingering with feather-brush in hand over a side-table, on which work-basket, books, writing-case, and flower-vases were arranged with tasteful neatness by those skilful hands. “No, you dear old Tabbie; you know that anything will do for me. Bread and jam, if you like, and some of your clotted cream. Won’t it be nice when we have our very own dairy, and our very own cows, who will know us and be fond of us, like Tim and the Shah?” She put on her hat and jacket, and went out into the garden again, singing “La Lettre de Perichole” as she went. It was a capital idea to take refuge in her boat. If his lordship should call--which was doubtful--since he might be one of that numerous race of people whose days are made up of unfulfilled intentions and promises never realized--if he should call, she would be far away when he came. He would make his inquiry, leave his card, which would look nice in the old Indian bowl on the hall-table. Such cards have a power of flotation unknown to other pasteboard; they are always at the top. Isola went to the little boat-house on the edge of the lawn, Tim following her. She pushed the light skiff down the slope into the water, and in a few minutes more her sculls were in the rowlocks and she was moving slowly up the river, between autumnal woods, in a silence broken only by the dip of the sculls and the little rippling sound as the water dropped away from them. A good deal of her life was spent like this, moving slowly up the river through that deep silence of the woodland shores. The river was as beautiful as the Dart almost, but lonelier and more silent. It was Martin Disney’s river--the river whose ripples had soothed his mother’s dying ears--the last of all earthly sounds that had been heard in the stillness of the death-chamber. In that tranquil atmosphere Isola used to dream of her absent husband and of that mystical world of the East which seemed made up of dreams--the world of Brahma and Buddha, of jewel-bedecked Rajahs and Palace-tombs--world of beauty and of terror; of tropical forests, tigers, orchids, serpents, elephants, Thugs.