"How industrious you are!" exclaimed the idle woman. "What do you say the embroidery is for? A shirt front?" Mrs. Dundyke displayed her work. It was for a shirt-front, and the embroidery was beautiful. She was doing two of them, she said. Her husband would require them during his shrievalty. "I'd not take such trouble for my husband, though he were made king to-morrow," exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle. After making that remark she took some more wine, and subsequently dropped asleep. Mrs. Dundyke, engaged in her labour of love, for she loved both the work itself and him who was to wear it, let the time slip on unconsciously. It was only when the afternoon shadows struck on her view as becoming long, when the sun had changed his place from one part of the heavens to another, that a vague feeling of alarm stole over her. "Where _can_ he be? What is the time?" She spoke aloud. Mrs. Hardcastle started at the words, and stared to see how the day had gone on. She, Mrs. Hardcastle, was the first to call out the name of Mr. Dundyke. She called it several times, and she had a loud, coarse, harsh voice; but only echo answered her. The boatmen woke up from their slumbers, and shouted in their patois, but there came no response from Mr. Dundyke. A sickening fear, whose very intensity made her heart cold, rushed over Mrs. Dundyke. Her hands shook; the red of her face turned to pallor. "Why, you never mean to say you are alarmed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle, looking at her in surprise. "No--no, ma'am, not exactly alarmed," returned poor Mrs. Dundyke, half ashamed to confess to the feeling. But her quivering lips gave the lie to her words. "I do think it strange he should go away, knowing he had sent for us. I was quite easy at first, thinking he had gone to sleep somewhere, overpowered with the heat. There is no danger, I suppose, that--that--anyone could fall into the water from this spot?" There was certainly no danger of that: and the boatmen laughed at the notion, for the bank and the water were at that place nearly on a level. "A man might walk in if he felt so inclined," observed Mrs. Hardcastle, jestingly, "but he could scarcely enter it in any other manner. And your husband is not one to cut short his life for pleasure." Not he, indeed! Never a man less likely to make his own quietus than plain practical David Dundyke, with his future aspirations and his harmless ambition. His wife knew that the Lord Mayor's chair, shining in the distant vista, would alone have kept him from plunging head foremost into the most tempting lake that ever bubbled in the sunlight. "There is no marvel about it," said Mrs. Hardcastle. "The boatmen were kept two hours at the hotel, remember, before we were found, and Mr. Dundyke naturally grew tired of waiting, and went away, thinking we should not come." "But where can he be?" cried Mrs. Dundyke. "What has he done with himself?"