Sir Geoffrey echoed her sigh. As he watched her silently, the instinct of long reticence making his forbearance natural, he saw a new expression dawn into her troubled face. Her eyes were fixed intently on the river; that they should be fixed was not strange, but there was a light of interest in them which induced Sir Geoffrey, half involuntarily, to bend his gaze in the same direction. He saw that Dorothy had now disembarked, and was standing, a solitary figure, close to the edge of the landing-stage. Something in her pose seemed to imply that she was talking, and just at this moment she moved to one side, revealing the head and shoulders of Jack Wilgress, which overtopped the river-bank in such a manner as to suggest that he was standing in the punt, of which the bamboo pole rose like a slender mast above his head. The group was certainly pictorial: the silhouette of Dorothy’s pretty figure telling well against the silvery river, and the young man’s pose, too, lending itself to an effective bit of composition; but Sir Geoffrey felt puzzled, and even a little hurt, by the interest that Margaret displayed at a moment which he at least had found sufficiently strenuous. He turned, stooping to pick up his hat; then he paused, and was about to speak, when Mrs. Vandeleur interrupted him, mutely, with a glance, followed swiftly by the return of her eyes to the river. Acquiescing patiently, Sir Geoffrey perceived that a change had occurred in the grouping of the two young people. Wilgress had drawn nearer to the girl; his figure stood higher against the watery background, apparently he had one foot on the step of the landing-stage. Dorothy extended a hand, which he clasped and held longer than one would have reckoned for in the ordinary farewell. The girl shook her head; another movement, and the punt began to glide reluctantly from the shore; then it turned slowly, swinging round and heading down-stream. Dorothy raised one hand to the bosom of her dress, and before she dropped it to her side threw something maladroitly towards her departing companion. Wilgress caught the flower--it was evidently a flower--making a dash which involved the loss of his punt-pole; a ripple of laughter, and Dorothy, unconscious of the four eyes which watched her from the shadows of the walnut tree, turned slowly, and began to climb the grassy slope. Mrs. Vandeleur’s eyelids drooped, and her lips, which had been parted for an instant in a pensive smile, trembled a little; she sighed, tapping the ground lightly with her foot, then sank back in her chair and seemed lost in contemplation of the needlework that lay upon her lap. Sir Geoffrey began to move away, but turned suddenly, and stooping, took one of her hands reverently in his own, clasping it as it lay upon the arm of her chair. “Margaret,” he said, “forgive me; but must it be good-bye, after all these years, or is there a chance for me?”