“What though the boats do follow, they ain’t going to run us down,” stout Lady Sundon made light of the demur; “you are becoming quite a kill-joy, Harry Fane.” It was an extraordinary sensation for Lady Bell to have the propriety of her behaviour doubted by a man—a sailor—before these pinks of fashion, Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles, who had been contributing to put Lady Bell at her ease. She disliked the ruggedness of Captain Fane as much as she liked the suavity of Sir George, which no sauciness of hers could disturb, for she had been saucy in substituting Sir George’s own name as a toast which he might drink in milk. Lady Bell looked Harry Fane in the face and challenged Sir George to accompany her in something which Lady Sundon would approve—“Begone, dull care,” or “Pray Goody, cease,” a challenge which Sir George accepted, nothing loth. But before the first song was concluded, one of the boats in the rear shot across the bow of the Sundons’ boat, and three or four excited men, in white vests and rich coats like Sir George’s, threatened to upset both of the craft as they gesticulated violently, while they shouted— “Heyday! Waring, hold on! What little opera-girl have you got there? Here, pitch her over to us, that she may tip us a stave. We’ve been dining at Kew, and we’ll engage to troll, among us, as good an accompaniment as you can contrive with your single pipe, sweet though it be.” “Hold off! Annesley, Gower; mind what you’re about. You’re absurdly wrong, I tell you, and if you don’t set yourselves right, by heavens! I’ll have to take the correcting of you into my own hands,” called back Sir George, frowning blackly for once in his life. “It is true, confound him!” cried one of the strange gentlemen, letting his boat fall off. “He’s in other company; yonder is Mrs. Lascelles—who would have thought it?—and there is an avenging fury of a naval officer porting helm. Good afternoon, Sir George, good afternoon to you,” dropped more faintly over the water. But Lady Bell had shrunk into herself abashed, recalled to her senses, and deeply wounded alike in her self-respect and her pride. Not all the solicitations and excuses of Sir George and Mrs. Lascelles could make Lady Bell immediately forget the indignity to which she had exposed herself, or forgive them for promoting the exposure, though she was silent on her feelings, and as willing as the others to welcome a diversion. The day was so complete in its spring character, that at sundown a little cloud of midges seemed to start into life and hover in the air. “How short their day is!” said Lady Bell regretfully for the ephemera. “I know they are only creatures of a day, but to come and go so soon,—if they had waited for a few more months, they might have danced through a few more hours, and not been pinched by so sharp a death. Who knows?”