“Only one, but nobody now--nobody. It was a sort of chance that took me there at all. I was in a little trouble, and then I left suddenly, as it happened, the same day as you did, Miss Trevanion. How well I remember it all! You were carrying the same little boy who was in the boat to-day--was it the same?--and you would not let me help you. I almost think if you had seen it was me you would not have allowed me to help you to-day.” “If I had seen it was--” Rosalind paused with troubled surprise. Sometimes his fine voice and soft tones lulled her doubts altogether, but, again, a sudden touch brought them all back. He was very quick, however, to observe the changes in her, and changed with them with a curious mixture of sympathy and servility. “Circumstances have carried me far away since then,” he said; “but I have always longed to know, to hear, something. If I could tell you the questions I have asked myself as to what might be going on; and how many times I have tried to get to England to find out!” “We have never returned to Highcourt,” she said, confused by his efforts to bring back those former meetings, and not knowing how to reply. “I think we shall not till my brother comes of age. Yes, my little brother was the same. He is very much excited about what happened to-day; neither of them understood it at first, but now they begin to perceive that it is a wonderful adventure. I hope the wetting will do you no harm.” “Please,” he said in a petulant tone, “if you do not want to vex me, say no more of that. I am not such a weak creature; indeed, there is nothing the matter with me, except in imagination.” “I think,” said Rosalind, with a little involuntary laugh, “that the baths of Aix are good for the imagination. It grows by what it feeds on; though rheumatism does not seem to be an imaginative sort of malady.” “You forget,” he cried, almost with resentment; “the danger of it is that it affects the heart, which is not a thing to laugh at.” “Oh, forgive me!” Rosalind cried. “I should not have spoken so lightly. It was because you were so determined that nothing ailed you. And I hope you are right. The lake was so beautiful to-day. It did not look as if it could do harm.” “You go there often? I saw you had been painting.” “Making a very little, very bad, sketch, that was all. Mr. Everard, I think I must go in. My aunt will want me.” “May I come, too? How kind she is! I feared that being without introduction, knowing nobody-- But Mrs. Lennox has been most generous, receiving me without a question--and you, Miss Trevanion.” “Did you expect me to stop you from saving the children till I had asked who you were?” cried Rosalind, endeavoring to elude the seriousness with which he always returned to the original subject. “It is a pretty manner of introduction to do us the greatest service, the greatest kindness.”