She thanked me with great courtesy, but without cordiality, for having saved her daughter's life at the expense of a broken limb, as it was by sheer strength that I prevented Estelle being torn from the boat and me. Her ladyship, however, soon dismissed the subject, and now Tiny, the snappish white shock, which for some hours had been forgotten and shamefully neglected, came in for as many caresses as her daughter, if not more. Anxious, for many obvious reasons, to gain the esteem of this cold and unapproachable dowager--even to love her, for her daughter's sake, most unlovable though she was--I was ever assiduous in my attentions; and these seemed to excite quietly the ridicule of Winifred Lloyd, while Dora said that she believed Lady Estelle must have quarrelled with me, and that I had transferred my affections to her mamma. But little Dora saw and knew more than I supposed. On the second day after the affair, when she came with her light tripping step down the perron of the mansion, and joined me on the terrace, where I was idling with a cigar, I said, "By the bye, why _did_ you leave us, Dora, in that remarkable manner, and not return?" "Mr. Clavell overtook me, and insisted upon my keeping an engagement to him. Moreover," she added, waggishly, "under my music-master I have learned that many a delightful duet becomes most discordant when attempted as a trio." "And for that reason you left us?" "Precisely," replied the lively girl, as she removed her hat, and permitted the wealth of her golden hair to float out on the wind. "Save for your poor arm being broken, and the terrible risks you ran, I might laugh at the whole affair; for it was quite romantic--like something out of a play or novel; but it quite put an end to the ball." "And now that Tom Clavell has gone back to his depôt at Chester, you can scarcely forgive me?" "I saw that you were dying to be alone with Lady Estelle," she retorted, "and _now_ don't you thank me?" I certainly felt a gratitude I did not express, but doubted whether her elder sister would have approved of Dora's complicity in the matter; and affecting to misunderstand her I said, "Why thank you now?" "Because," said Dora, looking at me, with her blue eyes half closed, "if on the top of a mountain an acquaintance ripens fast, good heavens, how must it have been with you two at the bottom of the sea!" And she laughed merrily at her own conceit, while swinging her hat to and fro by its ribbons. Lord Pottersleigh shook his head as if he disliked the whole affair, and nervously scanned the daily papers with spectacles on his thin aquiline nose, in expectation of seeing some absurd, perhaps impertinent, paragraph about it; and such was the old man's aristocratic vanity, that I verily believe, had he seen such, he would there and then have relinquished all his expectations--for he undoubtedly had them--of making Estelle Lady Pottersleigh, and the partner of his higher honours that were to come.