‘I never trust to that,’ answered the matron solemnly. ‘I like Deborah to get out at every station where the train stops, and see with her own eyes that my luggage is in the van. Railway people are so stupid.’ Edgar did not envy Deborah. Having thus adroitly planned an immediate departure he was off soon after daybreak next morning, and arrived at Torquay in time for dinner. He perambulated the loneliest places he could find all the evening, brooding over his disappointment, and wondering if there were any foundation for Gerald Goring’s idea that Daphne was to be won by him even yet. He slept at The Imperial, and devoted the next morning to lodging hunting; till his soul sickened at the very sight of the inevitable housemaid, who can’t answer the most general inquiry—not so far as to say how many bedrooms there are in the house, without reference to the higher powers—and the inevitable landlady, who cannot make up her mind about the rent till she has asked how many there are in family, and whether late dinners will be required. Before sundown, however, after ascending innumerable flights of stairs, and looking into a dismal series of newly-furnished rooms, he found a suite of apartments which he believed would satisfy his mother and Deborah; and having engaged the same for a period of three weeks, he went down to the water’s edge, to a spot where boating men most did congregate, and there negotiated the hire of a rakish little yawl, just big enough to be safe in a summer sea. In this light craft he was to sail at six o’clock next morning with a man and a boy. ‘How Daphne would enjoy knocking about this lovely coast in just such a boat!’ he thought. ‘If she were my wife, I would buy her as pretty a yacht as any lady could desire, and she and I would sail half round the world together. She must be tired of the Avon, poor child.’