Naturally they concluded that she must be a neighbour from one of the adjacent houses. They were a little surprised not to have noticed her going down into the water, but beyond that her apparition had no shadow of wonder for them. They made the furtive penetrating observations usual in such cases. They could see that she was swimming very gracefully and that she had a lovely face and very beautiful arms, but they could not see her wonderful golden hair because all that was hidden in a fashionable Phrygian bathing cap, picked up--as she afterwards admitted to my second cousin--some nights before upon a Norman _plage_. Nor could they see her lovely shoulders because of the red costume she wore. They were just on the point of feeling their inspection had reached the limit of really nice manners and Mabel was pretending to go on splashing again and saying to Betty, "She's wearing a red dress. I wish I could see--" when something very terrible happened. The swimmer gave a queer sort of flop in the water, threw up her arms and--vanished! It was the sort of thing that seems for an instant to freeze everybody, just one of those things that everyone has read of and imagined and very few people have seen. For a space no one did anything. One, two, three seconds passed and then for an instant a bare arm flashed in the air and vanished again. Mabel tells me she was quite paralysed with horror, she did nothing all the time, but the two Miss Buntings, recovering a little, screamed out, "Oh, she's drowning!" and hastened to get out of the sea at once, a proceeding accelerated by Mrs. Bunting, who with great presence of mind pulled at the ropes with all her weight and turned about and continued to pull long after they were many yards from the water's edge and indeed cowering in a heap at the foot of the sea wall. Miss Glendower became aware of a crisis and descended the steps, "Sir George Tressady" in one hand and the other shading her eyes, crying in her clear resolute voice, "She must be saved!" The maids of course were screaming--as became them--but the two men appear to have acted with the greatest presence of mind. "Fred, Nexdoors ledder!" said Mr. Randolph Bunting--for the next-door neighbour instead of having convenient stone steps had a high wall and a long wooden ladder, and it had often been pointed out by Mr. Bunting if ever an accident should happen to anyone there was _that_! In a moment it seems they had both flung off jacket and vest, collar, tie and shoes, and were running the neighbour's ladder out into the water. "Where did she go, Ded?" said Fred. "Right out hea!" said Mr. Bunting, and to confirm his word there flashed again an arm and "something dark"--something which in the light of all that subsequently happened I am inclined to suppose was an unintentional exposure of the Lady's tail.