"Mr. Coventry, I'm meaning--he as pulled you out of the water. You ought to be main grateful to him, Miss Ann, for sure." A faint colour stole up into Ann's white cheeks. "Oh, I am. You had better send back a message by the groom to that effect," she said curtly. Maria surveyed her with frank disapproval. "You should take shame to yourself, speaking that way, miss," she admonished severely. "But I expect you'm hungry-like, that's what 'tis. And I've a beautiful young chicken roasting for your lunch. You'll feel different when you've got a bit of something solid inside you." The roast chicken, combined with a glass of champagne, certainly contributed towards producing a more cheerful outlook on life, and when, later on in the afternoon, Mrs. Hilyard called, armed with some books for the invalid, and was graciously permitted by Maria to come upstairs, Ann welcomed her with unfeigned delight. "Well, it's quite nice to see you alive," smiled Cara as they kissed each other. "I really thought you were going to drown before my very eyes the other day." "Instead of which I've turned up again like a bad penny!" "Thanks to Mr. Coventry. If he hadn't chanced to be taking a constitutional in the direction of Berrier Cove that morning, I don't know what would have happened." Ann was not looking at her. Instead, her gaze was directed towards the open window as though the view which offered were of surpassing interest. "I wondered how it was he came to be on the spot just in the nick of time," she said negligently. "That was how," nodded Cara. "He'd been for a walk along the shore, and luckily came home by way of the Cove." "I suppose I shall have to thank him," remarked Ann gloomily. Cara looked a trifle mystified. Then she smiled. "It would be--just polite," she submitted. Ann frowned. "I always seem to be thanking him!" she complained, and, in response to the other's glance of inquiry, recounted the various occasions on which Coventry had rendered her a service. "Not a bad record of knight-errantry for a confirmed woman-hater, is it?" she added with a rueful touch of humour. "He wasn't always a woman-hater," answered Cara slowly. Her pansy-dark eyes held a curious dreaming look. "I'd forgotten. Of course, you'd met him before you came here. Did you know him pretty well?" "It was so many years ago," deprecated Cara, with a little wave of her hand which seemed to set her former friendship with Eliot away in the back ages. "But I knew a good deal about him--we knew his people when I was a girl in my teens--and I can understand why--how he became such a misanthrope."