Nor did John Gore look the complaisant son smiling at his father’s waggery. He nodded to his men, who quickened at the oars, making the boat forge ahead of my lord’s galley. Barbara’s eyes met the sea-captain’s as he glanced back for a moment to look at something, perhaps at her. She was glad and yet sorry that they were not together, for the secret that she concealed made his nearness a martyrdom and a season of suspense. How could she keep the consciousness of that grim blood-debt before her soul, with the beat of the ripples against the boat and the flash of the sunlight on the water? She felt too close to humanity to be able to look into her own haunted heart. These laughing, chattering women, these mercurial, pleasure-loving men! She could only sit there in a silence as in a trance, and let the shores and the tide of life glide by, until she could wake in the tragic loneliness of solitude—and of self. The garden of my Lord Gore’s house at Bushy came down to the river with a sweep of perfect sward. There was a stone boat-house with quaint copper dragons on the recessed gable ends, and a gilded vane shaped like a ship in sail. The steps that led up from the river had statues of fauns and wood-nymphs upon their pillars, and along the bank weeping-willows trailed their boughs in the brown water of the shallows. The garden itself had all that quaint formalism, that stately simplicity that was part of the lives of some of the Old-World gentry. A great stretch of grass cut into four squares by gravel paths, with closely clipped bays and yews set rhythmically along the walks. On the north, an ancient yew alley, a gallery of green gloom. On the south, a broad flower border, full of roses, pinks, and stocks, and all manner of flowers and herbs. On the west, the stone terrace of the house, with orange-trees in tubs ranged behind the balustrade. In the centre of all, where the four walks met, a fountain playing, throwing a plume of spray from the bosom of a river-god. John Gore’s boat, half a mile ahead of my lord’s galley, disembarked first at the steps, so that the servants were able to clear the baggage into the house and help in preparing that most essential of all incidents—dinner. John Gore sent Sparkin off to the kitchen, and passed the time pacing the gravel walks, with the river before him and the air sweet with the perfumes of the herbs. The stateliness of the place, its repose and opulence, had a strong charm for the man after rough years of voyaging and the squalid loneliness of prison. He contrasted it with the weird brilliance and fragmental beauty of the countries of the Crescent. Nothing could seem more rich to him than those splendid lawns, like green samite spread without seam or wrinkle. Even the gilded vane on the boat-house had memories, for he could remember coveting it as a child, and the thing may have suggested the life of those who go down to the sea in ships.