"How nice it is on the water!" said Audrey to Mr. Gilman in a low, gentle voice. "There is a channel round there with three feet of water in it at low tide." She sketched a curve in the air with her finger. "Of course you know this part," said Mr. Gilman cautiously and even apprehensively. His glance seemed to be saying: "And it was you who gave that fearful whistle, too! Are you, can you be, all that I dreamed?" "I do," Audrey answered. "Would you like me to show it you." "I should be more than delighted," said Mr. Gilman. With a gesture he summoned a man to untie the dinghy again and hold it, and the man slid down into the dinghy like a monkey. "I'll pull," said Audrey, in the boat. The man sprang out of the dinghy. "One instant!" Mr. Gilman begged her, standing up in the sternsheets, and popping his head through a porthole of the saloon. "Mr. Price!" "Sir?" From the interior. "Will you be good enough to play that air with thirty-six variations, of Beethoven's? We shall hear splendidly from the dinghy." "Certainly, sir." And Audrey said to herself: "You don't want him to flirt with Tommy while you're away, so you've given him something to keep him busy." Mr. Gilman remarked under his breath to Audrey: "I think there is nothing finer than to hear Beethoven on the water." "Oh! There isn't!" she eagerly concurred. Ignoring the thirty-six variations of Beethoven, Audrey rowed slowly away, and after about a hundred yards the boat had rounded a little knoll which marked the beginning of a narrow channel known as the Lander Creek. The thirty-six variations, however, would not be denied; they softly impregnated the whole beautiful watery scene. "Perhaps," said Mr. Gilman suddenly, "perhaps your ladyship was not quite pleased at me rowing-about with Miss Thompkins--especially after I had taken her for a walk." He smiled, but his voice was rather wistful. Audrey liked him prodigiously in that moment. "Foolish man!" she replied, with a smile far surpassing his, and she rested on her oars, taking care to keep the boat in the middle of the channel. "Do you know why I asked you to come out? I wanted to talk to you quite privately. It is easier here." "I'm so glad!" he said simply and sincerely. And Audrey thought: "Is it possible to give so much pleasure to an important and wealthy man with so little trouble?" "Yes," she said. "Of course you know who I really am, don't you, Mr. Gilman?" "I only know you're Mrs. Moncreiff," he answered. "But I'm not! Surely you've heard something? Surely it's been hinted in front of you?" "Never!" said he. "But haven't you asked--about my marriage, for instance?" "To ask might have been to endanger your secret," he said. "I see!" she murmured. "How frightfully loyal you are, Mr. Gilman! I do admire loyalty. Well, I dare say very, very few people do know. So I'll tell you. That's my home over there." And she pointed to Flank Hall, whose chimneys could just be seen over the bank.