"Pity is akin to love," quoted Mrs. Perage, apparently to the ceiling. The girl laughed and shook her head. "In spite of your matter-of-fact ways and the common-sense you pride yourself upon, you have an imaginative vein, Mrs. Perage. I am sure you see in this accident the beginning of a romance." "If the young man is handsome, as you say, and a good sort as Jim Vane says, why not?" asked the old lady, smiling. "Besides, I don't believe in chance, as everything is ordained by Providence. I shouldn't be at all surprised if, in the long run, it was proved that Mr. Hench tumbled out of the clouds to be your husband. However, it's early days yet to talk. Wait and see!" As the result of long experience, dating from the time when she was a small child in short frocks, Gwen knew that it was useless to argue with Mrs. Perage, so she left the room and went upstairs to change her dress. And as a matter of fact, she had been extremely struck with Hench's good looks, as a woman naturally would be. Also, he seemed to be excessively agreeable, and likewise she owed him her life, not forgetting that she was just at that age when girls begin to dream of marriage. Poor Gwen had not passed a very happy time with her cantankerous father, and was not averse to having a pleasant home and an aggressively devoted lover. So she looked at herself in the glass, pondering over Mrs. Perage's remarks, and blushed crimson to find that Hench was taking up much more of her thoughts than she considered altogether proper. That it was a case of love at first sight she would not admit, but on the whole her feelings had a great deal to do with the oft-quoted proverb. On his side, Owain had no doubts whatever on the subject, strange as it may seem, considering that hitherto he had never been in love. His cousin's lovely face, her sympathetic kindness, together with the undeniable fact that he had saved her life, created in him a number of tumultuous feelings, which he spent the night in analysing. To be sure, he told himself that he did so because the pain of his ankle kept him wide awake, and because thoughts in this direction took his mind off his aching bones. But when the dawn came, he was tolerably certain that he was in love. The feeling he now experienced was wholly different to that with which he had regarded Zara. He had admired the dancer in a cool, reflective, judicious way, seeing that she had faults as well as virtues. But in Gwen he could see no faults, and never paused to consider that he could scarcely know her character from the little he had seen of her.