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She broke off on the verge of tears, and Dick considerately transferred his attention to his friend.

“Let’s see the damage, old fellow!”

“It is nothing,” said Jacques, still faintly smiling. “Yes, you may see it if you like, if only to prove that I speak the truth.”

He thrust out one hand and displayed a scorched and blistered palm.

“Call that nothing!” began Dick.

Fletcher suddenly pushed forward with an oath that startled them all.

“I should know that hand anywhere!” he exclaimed. “You infernal, lying impostor!”

There was an elaborate tattoo of the American flag on the extended wrist, to which he pointed with a furious laugh.

“Deny it if you can!” he said.

Jacques looked at him gravely, without the smallest sign of agitation.

“You certainly have good reason to know that hand rather well,” he said after a moment, speaking with extreme deliberation, “considering that it has had the privilege of giving you the finest thrashing of your life.”

Fletcher turned purple. He looked as if he were going to strike the speaker on the mouth. But before he could raise his hand Hilary suddenly forced herself between them.

“Mr. Fletcher,” she said, her voice quivering with anger, “go instantly! There is your boat. And never come near us again!”

Fletcher fell back a step, but he was too furious to obey such a command.

“Do you think I am going to leave that confounded humbug to have it all his own way?” he snarled. “I tell you–“

But here Culver intervened.

“You shut up!” he ordered sternly. “We’ve had too much of you already. You had better go.”

He took Fletcher imperatively by the arm, but Jacques intervened.

“Pray let the gentleman speak, Dick!” he said. “It will ease his feelings perhaps.”

“No!” broke in Hilary breathlessly. “No, no! I won’t listen! I tell you I won’t!” facing the big man almost fiercely. “Tell me yourself if you like!”

He looked at her closely, still with that odd half-smile upon his face.

Then, before them all, he took her hand, and, bending, held it to his lips.

“Thank you, Hilary!” he said very softly.

In the privacy of her own cabin Hilary removed her tatters and cooled her tingling cheeks. She and her brother were engaged to dine at Dick’s bungalow that night, but an overwhelming shyness possessed her, and at the last moment she persuaded Bertie to go alone. It was plain that for some reason Bertie was hugely amused, and she thought it rather heartless of him.

She dined alone on the house-boat with her face to the river. Her fright had made her somewhat nervous, and she was inclined to start at every sound. When the meal was over she went up to her favourite retreat on the upper deck. A golden twilight still lingered in the air, and the river was mysteriously calm. But the girl’s heart was full of a heavy restlessness. Each time she heard a punt-pole striking on the bed of the river she raised her head to look.

He came at last–the man for whom her heart waited. He was punting rapidly down-stream, and she could not see his face. Yet she knew him, by the swing of his arms, the goodly strength of his muscles,–and by the suffocating beating of her heart. She saw that one hand was bandaged, and a passionate feeling that was almost rapture thrilled through and through her at the sight. Then he shot beyond her vision, and she heard the punt bump against the house-boat.

“It’s a gentleman to see you, miss,” said the Badger, thrusting a grey and grinning visage up the stairs.

“Ask him to come up!” said Hilary, steadying her voice with an effort.

A moment later she rose to receive the man she loved. And her heart suddenly ceased to beat.

“You!” she gasped, in a choked whisper.

He came straight forward. The last light of the day shone on his smooth brown face, with its steady eyes and strong mouth.

“Yes,” he said, and still through his quiet tones she seemed to hear a faint echo of the subdued twang which dwellers in the Far West sometimes acquire. “I, John Merrivale, late of California, beg to render to you, Hilary St. Orme, in addition to my respectful homage, that freedom for which you have not deigned to ask.”

She stared at him dumbly, one hand pressed against her breast. The ripple of the river ran softly through the silence. Slowly at last Merrivale turned to go.

And then sharply, uncertainly, she spoke.

“Wait, please!” she said.

She moved close to him and laid her hand on the flower-bedecked balustrade, trembling very much.

“Why have you done this?” Her quivering voice sounded like a prayer.

He hesitated, then answered her quietly through the gloom.

“I did it because I loved you.”

“And what did you hope to gain by it?” breathed Hilary.

He did not answer, and she drew a little nearer as though his silence reassured her.

“Wouldn’t it have saved a lot of trouble,” she said, her voice very low but no longer uncertain, “if you had given me my freedom in the first place? Don’t you think you ought to have done that?”

“I don’t know,” Merrivale said. “That fellow spoilt my game. So I offer it to you now–with apologies.”

“I should have appreciated it–in the first place,” said Hilary, and suddenly there was a ripple of laughter in her voice like an echo of the water below them. “But now I–I–have no use for it. It’s too late. Do you know, Jack, I’m not sure he did spoil your game after all!”

He turned towards her swiftly, and she thrust out her hands to him with a quick sob that became a laugh as she felt his arms about her.

“You hairless monster!” she said. “What woman ever wanted freedom when she could have–Love?”

* * * * *

Two days later Viscount Merrivale’s friends at the club read with interest and some amusement the announcement that his marriage to Miss Hilary St. Orme had been fixed to take place on the last day of the month.