Vera was not at all sure that she would. "You make it almost impossible, you know." They were all out in a party, and were to meet the luncheon and the boys, who had gone round in the boat. As parties will have it, they had soon scattered. Lingen had taken Margery Dacre to himself, Lucy was with her husband. Urquhart, now he came to think of it, began to understand that the sceptre was out of his hands. The pass, worn out of the shelving rock by centuries of foot-work, wound itself about the breasting cliffs like a scarf; below them lay the silver fiord, and upon that, a mere speck, they could see the motor-boat, with a wake widening out behind her like parallel lines of railway. Urquhart saw in his mind that he would be a fool to quarrel with Vera. She was not on his side, he could feel; but he didn't despair of her. One way of putting her off him forever was to allow her to think him a fool. That he could not afford. "Don't turn against me for a mannerism, my dear," he said. "I turn against you, if at all, for a lack of mannerism," said Vera briskly. "It's too bad of you. Here I am as so much ballast for your party, and when I begin to make myself useful, you pretend I'm not there. But I _am_ there, you know." "I was cross," he said, "because I'm rather worried, and I thought you were going to worry me more." "Well, maybe that I am,"--she admitted that. "But I don't like to see a sharp-faced man make a donkey of himself. The credit of the family is at stake." He laughed. "I wouldn't be the first of us--and this wouldn't be the first time. There's whimsy in the blood. Well--out with it. Let me know the worst." Vera stopped. "I intend to do it sitting. We've heaps of time. None of the others want us." Urquhart hit the rock with his staff. "That's the point, my child. Do they--or don't they?" "You believe," Vera said, "that Lucy is in love with you." Urquhart replied, "I know that she was." "There you have the pull over me," she answered. "I haven't either your confidence or hers. All I can tell you is that now she isn't." Urquhart was all attention. "Do you mean, she has told you anything?" "Good Heavens," Vera scoffed, "what do you take me for? Do you think I don't know by the looks of her? If you weren't infatuated you'd know better than I do." "My dear girl," Urquhart said, with a straight look at her, "the fact is, I am infatuated." "I'm sorry for you. You've made a mess of it. But I must say that I'm not at all sorry for her. Don't you suppose that she is the sort to find the world well lost for your _beaux yeux_. Far from that. She'd wilt like a rose in a window-box." "I'd take her into fairy-land," said Urquhart. "She should walk in the dawn. She wouldn't feel her feet." "She would if they were damp," said Vera, who could be as direct as you please. "If you think she's a wood nymph in a cage, you're very much mistaken. She's very domestic." "I know," said the infatuate, "that I touched her." Vera tossed her head.