Mrs. Jerningham was opposed to this. She declared that she had not the slightest objection to the rain; she was wrapped up to an absurd degree; and she drew her gauzy burnous round her in evidence of the fact, while Lucy adjusted a second cloak of thin scarlet fabric over the gauzy white burnous. Laurence, however, insisted on landing, and did his utmost to procure a vehicle; while the two ladies shivered in a chilly inn-parlour, their garments already damp with the heavy rain. He came back to them in despair. No fly was to be had at Sunbury for love or money. There was a Volunteer ball at Chertsey that very evening, and every vehicle was engaged. “I had much rather go back in the boat,” said Emily. “But the doctor said you were to be so careful,” suggested Lucy. “I do not believe in the doctor. Come, Laurence, it is better to encounter another shower than to wait shivering here for unattainable flies.” To this Mr. Desmond unwillingly assented. There was a pause in the summer storm--a faint glimmer of watery sunlight low in the cloudy west. The boat seemed the only possible means of getting home. “If you would stay here all night,” he suggested, “it would be better than running any risk.” “I could not exist a night in a strange hotel,” replied Mrs. Jerningham, glancing round the bare, bleak-looking room, with a shudder. “Please take us home, Mr. Desmond, if you are not afraid of the rain yourself.” There seemed no alternative; so Laurence assented to an immediate return to the boat, comforting himself with the hope that the gleam of sunlight was the harbinger of a fine evening. He insisted, however, upon borrowing a thick shawl and a railway rug from the landlady at Sunbury, in case of the worst. For half a mile the faint streak of sunshine lighted the voyagers, and then the worst came; the floodgates of the sky were opened, and a summer deluge descended upon the quiet river. Mr. Desmond packed his two charges in the borrowed wraps, and sculled with a desperate vigour. “It’s most unlucky,” he said; “there’s nothing for it between this and home.” The rain fell in torrents and without ceasing, until the lights of Hampton shone upon them, blotted and blurred by the storm. Long peals of thunder grumbled in the distance; vivid lightnings lit the pale faces of the women; while Mr. Desmond pulled steadily on, lifting the boat over a broad sweep of water with every swoop of his sculls. One of the voyagers in that boat took a kind of pleasure in the storm. To Emily Jerningham this splashing of rain and sonorous pealing of thunder seemed better than the summer twilight, the calm June sky, and glassy water--that outward peace which had so jarred upon the tempest within.