Roland had transferred himself to Cranston some three days after we saw him at the Rectory dinner-table--now more than a week ago, and even that brief period had been sufficient to convince him that in his former anticipations of the conditions of life there, he was not likely to be agreeably disappointed. The same constraint pervaded everything, the same latent antagonism seemed to underlie all intercourse, and in a hundred and one small ways, the more risky because so trivial, the general harmony seemed in a state of chronic peril. One of his first acts had been to make a call at Wandsborough Rectory to explain the circumstances of the assumed name. At first his explanation had been somewhat stiffly received, but it was not in Dr Ingelow to keep up resentment; moreover, a happy remark to the effect that the _incognito_ had been the means of beginning what the speaker hoped he might be allowed to call a valued friendship, which otherwise he might never have known, completed the turning of the scale, and he was absolved all round. Yet not quite all round, for Olive, remembering her free and easy utterances made on the beach that morning, found an early opportunity of taking him privately to task. "I think you might have told _me_ at the time," she had said, "instead of letting me run on with all sorts of local gossip as you did." "Why? Oh, I see. But you didn't abuse us a bit more than we deserve. I asked you a question and you answered it. And, between ourselves, the answer didn't surprise me in the very least." "That's all very well, but you ought to have stopped me." "How hard-hearted you are, when all the others have forgiven me!" "Have they? Oh, well, then, for the credit of the family I suppose I must exercise the same Christian virtue," had said Olive mischievously. "You may consider yourself forgiven by me too. There." "One thing more," he had urged, "is wanted to make that forgiveness complete. You must continue to mete me out the same treatment as you did to the stranger, Rowlands; not categorise me as an obnoxious Dorrien." "That will depend entirely upon your future behaviour," she had returned, with the same mischievous flash. The lake was barely five minutes' walk from the house, and as the two-- the three, rather, for Roy, all the fresher for his ducking, was trotting along at their side--turned the corner of the garden walk, they came face to face with their mother and two young ladies, who were speedily introduced as the Miss Nevilles. "We've been in the coolest corner of the county all the morning--on the water," said Roland, catching his mother's displeased glance at his sister. "Nellie wanted to go indoors half an hour ago, but I positively refused to let her land." "What a beautiful dog! Is it yours, Mr Dorrien?" said the eldest.