"I had made up my mind to go from Plymouth to Falmouth in a small punt. She was fourteen feet long. When I had got some distance away, my hat was blown overboard. I secured the tiller a-lee, threw off my clothes, and jumped after my hat. As I was returning with the hat the sail filled, the boat got way on her and sailed some distance before she came up in the wind. I had almost reached her when she filled again. This happened three or four times. At length I managed by a frantic struggle to catch a hold of the rudder, but I was so exhausted that it was long before I had strength to get into the boat." This tale induced Captain Acton to indulge in the recital of a hair-breadth escape of his own, but a flow of exciting anecdotes was arrested by Miss Acton declaring that she was not strong enough to bear to hear such horrid, moving stories, particularly just a little before bed-time. Lucy was somewhat puzzled by Mr Lawrence. His behaviour was cool, gentleman-like, distant, cautious, entirely sober, and for the most part he expressed himself with a high degree of intelligence. She could not but remember that in the morning when, to be sure, he might be said to have been "flown with wine and insolence," he had, with a passion which assuredly borrowed nothing of heat from liquor, plucked a daisy and bade her put it to her sweet lips and return it to him, and he had then concealed the little flower in his pocket as the only sacred treasure he possessed. This evening his bearing was on the whole as formal and collected as though she was but an acquaintance in whose company he could sit without being overcome by her charms. The passion of the morning was genuine and sincere, drink or no drink; the behaviour this evening was calculated and extraordinary. Perhaps in the delicate candlelight she might not catch every expression of eye, every movement of mouth, every shade of change in the expression of the whole face, so that she would justly imagine she had missed through defective illumination the impassioned look, the swift pencilling by rapture of the lineaments which her maiden's intuition gave her eloquently and convincingly to know must be the secret homage of his heart, let him mask his handsome and worn face as he would. "I wish, madam," said he, "that you would return to the piano at which we interrupted you. "Papa will not thank me for making a noise." "Oh, my dear, don't say that. I am quite sure that if you will play, Mr Lawrence will afterwards sing, and I shall be charmed to hear you, sir, for I recollect your sweet and powerful voice both here and at your father's." "There is little that I would not do to oblige you, sir," answered Mr Lawrence, and going to the piano he stood beside it, as though waiting for Lucy to seat herself at the instrument.