During the passage few words were said; and indeed the eager throb of the launch's engine discouraged conversation. Chandon steered, with his eyes fixed on the Island. Miss Sally, too, gazed ahead for the most part; but from time to time she contrived a glance at his weary face-- grey even in the sunset towards which they were speeding. Sunset lay broad and level across the Severn Sea, lighting its milky flood with splashes of purple, of lilac, of gold. The sun itself, as they approached the Island, dropped behind its crags, silhouetting them against a sky of palest blue. They drove into its chill shadow, and landed on the very beach from which the children had watched the stag swim out to meet his death. They climbed up by a pathway winding between thorn and gorse, and on the ridge met the flaming sunlight again. Miss Sally shielded her eyes. "They will be here, if anywhere," said Sir Miles, and led the way down the long saddle-back to the entrance of the gully. "Hullo!" exclaimed he, coming to a halt as the chimneys of the bungalow rose into view above the gorse bushes. From one of them a steady stream of smoke was curling. "It's a hundred to one!" gasped Miss Sally triumphantly. They hurried down--to use her own expression--like a pack in full cry. It was Parson Chichester who claimed afterwards that he won by a short length, and lifting the latch, pushed the door open. And this was the scene he opened on, so far as it has since been reconstructed:-- Tilda stood with her back to the doorway and a couple of paces from it, surveying a table laid--so far as Sir Miles's stock of glass and cutlery allowed--for a dinner-party of eight. She was draped from the waist down in a crimson window-curtain, which spread behind her in a full-flowing train. In her hand she held her recovered book--the _Lady's Vade-Mecum_; and she read from it, addressing Arthur Miles, who stood and enacted butler by the side-table, in a posture of studied subservience-- "Dinner bein' announced, the 'ostess will dismiss all care, or at least appear to do so: and, 'avin' marshalled 'er guests in order of precedence (see page 67 supra) will take the arm of the gentleman favoured to conduct 'er. Some light and playful remark will 'ere be not out of place, such as--" "Well, I'm d--d, if you'll excuse me," ejaculated Miss Sally. Late that night, in his smoking-room at Meriton, Sir Miles Chandon knocked out the ashes of his pipe against the bars of the grate, rose, stretched himself, and looked about him. Matters had left a bedroom candle ready to hand on a side-table, as his custom was. But Sir Miles took up the lamp instead. Lamp in hand, he went up the great staircase, and along the unlit fifty yards of corridor to the room where his son lay. In all the great house he could hear no sound, scarcely even the tread of his own foot on the thick carpeting.