The river was brimming full, and, as it raced, the black water and the cold froth washed in deep eddies between the rocks; the sunlit bank opposite was red with withered bracken and sedge; the soft booming of a waterfall came to the ear. Passing round the curve they saw the thick and creamy column of water plunge from its edge of low crag to its ruin among the boulders; above it two or three battered fir-trees stood on the high ground, grey and straight and rigid beside the lavish rush and confusion. Lady Susan was leaning against one of the fir-trees, smoking her cigarette, and looking fixedly and dreamily at the water; Glasgow, with her fur-lined coat on his arm, was standing very close to her, looking as if he had said something to which she had not as yet replied. She did not move when Slaney and Bunbury joined them, and was unaffectedly uninterested in general conversation. Slaney had never thought her so handsome; her eyes seemed to look out of her heart and into a remote place unseen of others, instead of summing up things around her with her wonted practical glance. It was against all theories of woman-kind, yet the fact remained that Slaney liked Lady Susan. CHAPTER IX The party returned to the station by different ways, that chosen by Slaney and Bunbury involving a good deal of wandering by dark and intricate paths in the hollow of the wood before the high road again was reached. The other half of the picnic was not in sight; and when Slaney and her companion arrived at the station, the engine and brake van, in which they had come, had disappeared, and in their place was another engine that had come up the line with a train of trucks. It was a small and very dirty engine, the driver’s white jumper was as grimy as his face, and coal-dust and oil had gone hand-in-hand to effect a general and thorough defilement. The ganger explained the position respect-fully. Mr. Glasgow had found that he was obliged to catch the mail train for Dublin, and he and the lady had started a quarter of an hour before; he had ordered the ballast-engine to wait for Major Bunbury.