He could hardly believe that this was the identical artless Daisy that had blinked her dewy lashes at him in his office a few hours earlier. She sparkled, but it was more now with the sweet sting of champagne. In the exhilaration of the trip, and its assumed happy termination, her speech threw off more and more its trammels of formality. She was sportive with the stolid mariners. She coquetted her way to their deeply-embedded hearts, and smiling on the shipping-clerk, who had turned green with jealousy, asked him not to feel bound to her if he would rather look another way. Even the majestic diver himself did not escape her; but was questioned as to the aggravation he must feel when he came across mermaids and was unable to kiss them. She made a toy of every detail of his harness; and when at last they had anchored, and the ladder was hung over the barge-side, and the helmet was screwed into place and the air-pump got into position, she actually did, with a chirrup of laughter, drop a butterfly kiss on the glass plate through which his face looked, and bid the grotesque figure, as it valued her favour, return with the bag or not return at all. And, after that, the silence of nervous suspense which came to reign was a relief to one person. The diver had his minute instructions as to where to find the red morocco handbag, and his essay was to be confined solely to that item of treasure-trove. Many anxious minutes passed, however--while the pump squeaked and thumped monotonously and the gear was spasmodically paid out--before a rising swirl in the water indicated the return of the submerged venturer. But when at last his head and arms did appear over the side, the young lady gave a scream which “shivered to the stars.” [image: images/img_180.jpg caption: “THE YOUNG LADY GAVE A SCREAM WHICH ‘SHIVERED TO THE STARS.’”] “O--O! you sweet, you duck, you beauty!” He laid the red morocco bag at her feet. And so the object of the mission was accomplished. Gilead, satisfied so far, had been nursing secret designs of sending Miss Limner and the shipping-clerk back to London together, while he followed by a later train. Finding, however, to his discomfiture that the clerk, after formally identifying the property (which was packed away thrillingly among natty little articles of ornament and attire) had instructions to remain at Sheerness, his gallantry would leave him no alternative but to escort the lady back to town himself. A further _coup de la fortune_ consigned them to a compartment in the train of which they remained the sole undisturbed possessors. Miss Limner, a very new expression on her face, half insolence, half exultation, lolled back against the cushions, regarding the young man with an eye of saucy self-possession. She did not open her mouth, however, until they were well started on their return journey; and then she spoke suddenly, and to disturbing effect. “You have been very kind to me,” she said. “Would you like to kiss me?”