A fortnight later Sir Geoffrey was sitting in a punt, beguiling the afternoon of a rainy day by luring unwary roach to their destruction with a hair-line and pellets of paste, delicately kneaded by the taper fingers of Miss Dorothy Vandeleur. He was the guest of Mrs. Vandeleur’s brother, his school friend, Philip Addison the Q.C., and Mrs. Vandeleur and her daughter were also staying at the delightful old Elizabethan house which nestled, with such an air of immemorial occupation, halfway down the wooded side of one of the Streatley hills, its spotless lawn sloping steeply to the margin of the fairest river in the world. Miss Vandeleur had enshrined herself among a pile of rugs and cushions at the stern of the punt, where the roof of her uncle’s boat-house afforded shelter from the persistent rain. She was arrayed in the blue serge dear to the modern water-nymph; and at intervals she relieved her feelings by shaking a small fist at the leaden vault of sky. For the rest, her attention was divided impartially between her novel, with which she did not seem to make much progress, her fox-terrier Sancho, and the slowly decreasing lump of paste, artfully compounded with cotton-wool for consistency, with which, as occasion arose, she ministered to her companion’s predatory needs. The capture of a fish was followed inevitably by a disarrangement of her nest of cushions, and a pathetic petition for its instant release and restoration to the element from which it had been untimely inveigled. Occasionally, the rain varied the monotony of the dolorous drizzle by a vehement and spirited downpour, lasting for some minutes, prompting one of the occupants of the punt to remark, with misplaced confidence, that it must clear up soon, after that. Then Sir Geoffrey would abandon his rod, and beat a retreat to the stern of the punt; and during these interludes, much desultory conversation ensued. Once, Miss Vandeleur startled her companion by asking, suddenly, how it was that he seemed so absurdly young? “I hope I am not rude?” she added, “but really you do strike me as almost the youngest person I know. You are much younger than Jack--Mr. Wilgress--for instance, and it’s only about three years since he left Eton.” Sir Geoffrey smiled, wondering a little whether the girl was laughing at him; for though a man of forty-seven, who has for twenty years successfully resisted a trying climate, may consider himself as very far from the burden of old age, it was conceivable that the views of a maiden in her teens might be very different. “It’s because I am having such a good time,” he hazarded. “You and your mother are responsible, you know; before I met you at the Savoy, on that memorable evening, I was feeling as blue as--as the sky ought to be if it had any decency, and at least as old as the river. I suppose it’s true that youth and good spirits are contagious.”