“Of all things in the world the most delightful!” screamed Miss Grunderson. “Oh, do please take us out in one of those darling little dangerous-looking boats I saw in the Swiss boat-house down there. And oh, what a pity I didn’t wear a hat instead of this odious blue bonnet, which is beginning to fly already!” said Rosa, looking despondently at the expansive ribands fluttering below her double chin, which had lost some little of their azure intensity under the influence of the July sun. To Miss Grunderson’s great delight, the two gentlemen proceeded forthwith to the boat-house, and lowered a couple of wherries, as perfect in their way as any craft that ever came out of the hands of Messrs. Messenger. Harcourt placed Mrs. Tredethlyn and Julia Desmond in one of these boats, and to the other descended Miss Grunderson, with more small shrieks of terror and feminine skirmishing, and a greater display of Balmoral boots and embroidered flounces than was absolutely necessary to the embarkation. “I never get into a boat without thinking I shall be drowned,” said Rosa, plumping down upon the cushions, and all but upsetting herself at the first start; “the water does give way so. But if one _was_ drowned, it would be rather nice to have a paragraph all to one’s self in the daily newspapers, or perhaps what pa calls a social leader, beginning with something about the Moloch Pleasure having swallowed another victim, and Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm, and the Pale Horse, and so on.” And then Miss Grunderson, finding herself quite alone with the latest object of her adoration, exerted all her small fascinations to beguile the woman-hater from his stern aversion to her sex. She chattered as gaily as some talking-bird; and Roderick Lowther, who imagined that he had by this time established himself firmly as a disinterested individual, condescended to make himself agreeable, and to drift into that pleasant current of meaningless small-talk which malicious people call flirtation. While Roderick rowed his fair companion swiftly past the verdant bank, Harcourt let his boat drift slowly down with the current, only dipping his oars now and then in the intervals of his discourse. Maude had forgotten her troubled reverie upon the terrace, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of all the old talk about books and music, poetry and painting, which had been so delicious to her in those departed days when she and Harcourt had drifted down that same river plighted husband and wife. There is no monitor so sharp as rural nature when we have need to be reminded of our inconstancy. Looking at those reedy banks, those tranquil gardens sloping to a tranquil tide, Maude found it almost difficult to believe in the changes of her life since she had first floated down that stream, a child, with wild-flowers in her lap, and her little bare arm hanging across the edge of the boat, for the infantile pleasure of splashing.