Harcourt Lowther, very quick of apprehension always, especially so where his own interests were concerned, had taken careful note of these broken sentences uttered by Maude Hillary, and, rowing Londonwards in the summer darkness, pondered on them long and deliberately, only arousing himself now and then from his sombre reverie, in order to express his profound contempt for some amateur waterman who was just saved from a foul by the superior skill of the young officer. What did it mean? That was the question which Mr. Lowther set himself to answer. “It means something more than the caprice of a shallow-hearted jilt,” he thought, as he rested on his oars and lighted his cigar. “How pale she grew at sight of me! That white, agonized look in her face was real despair. ‘If I could know all!’ she said. All _what_? There’s a mystery somewhere. Maude Hillary is the last woman in the world to throw over a poor lover for the sake of a rich one. The sentimental girl, who was ready to keep her engagement with me at the sacrifice of her father’s fortune, would scarcely marry a clownish rustic for the sake of his thirty thousand a year. Besides, these heiresses, who have never known what it is to have a wish denied them, are the most romantic creatures in creation, and cherish sublimely absurd ideas upon the sordid dross question. No, I cannot think that Maude would be influenced by any mercenary considerations--and yet how else----?” The villas and villages on the river-banks flitted past him like phantom habitations in the dim light. The flat shores of Battersea; the dingy roofs and chimneys of crowded Chelsea and manufacturing Lambeth; the bridges and barges; the low-lying prison, lurking like some crouching beast upon the swampy ground, shifted by as the oars dipped in the quiet water, while Harcourt Lowther’s light wherry sped homeward with the tide. But all the length of his water-journey he could find no satisfactory answer to that question about Maude Hillary; and when he relinquished his boat to its rightful owner at a certain landing-place in Westminster, he was still undecided as to the meaning of those broken phrases which had dropped from the lips of the merchant’s daughter in the first moment of surprise and emotion. “I dare say it is only the old story after all,” he thought, as he walked towards the Strand, in the purlieus of which he had taken up his quarters. “Lionel Hillary, being as rich as Crœsus, is determined that no poor man shall profit by his daughter’s fortune. Water runs to the river, and Maude’s dowry will go to swell that old Cornish miser’s savings. It’s only my usual luck. I am engaged to a beautiful woman with a hundred thousand or so for a fortune, and I find a victorious rival in the man who cleans my boots.”