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“Oh, nonsense!” said Calder. “Come over to the temple, Miss Bushell. I won’t upset the canoe.”

“Well, if you insist,” said Millie.

Then Mrs. Marland remarked in the quietest voice in the world—

“There’s some one in the temple.”

“What?” cried Millie.

“Eh?” exclaimed Calder.

“Nonsense!” said Charlie.

“I saw a face at the window,” insisted Mrs. Marland.

“Oh, Mrs. Marland! Was it very awful?”

“Not at all, Millie–very pretty,” and she gave Charlie a look full of meaning.

“Look, look!” cried Millie in strong agitation.

And, as they looked, a slim figure in white came quietly out of the temple, a smile–and, alas! no vestige of a blush–on her face, walked composedly down the steps, and, standing on the lowest one, thence–did not throw herself into the water–but called, in the most natural voice in the world, “Which of you is coming to fetch me?”

Charlie looked at Calder. Calder said,

“I think you’d better put her across, old man. And–er–we might as well walk on.”

They turned away, Millie’s eyes wide in surprise, Mrs. Marland smiling the smile of triumphant sagacity.

“I was coming to you to-morrow,” cried Charlie the moment his canoe bumped against the stops.

“What do you mean, sir, by staying away a whole week? How could you?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlie. “You see, I couldn’t come till Calder—-

“Oh, what about Calder?”

“He’s all right.”

“What? Miss–the girl you upset out of the canoe?”

“I think so,” said Charlie.

“Ah, well!” said Agatha. “But how very curious!” Then she smiled at Charlie, and asked, “But what love can there be, Mr. Merceron, where there is deceit?”

Charlie took no notice at all of this question.

“Do you mind Calder going?” he whispered.

“Well, not much,” said Miss Glyn.

Thus it was that the barony of Warmley returned to the house of Merceron, and the portrait of the wicked lord came to hang once more in the dining-room. So the curtain falls on the comedy; and what happened afterwards behind the scenes, whether another comedy, or a tragedy, or a mixed half-and-half sort of entertainment, now grave, now gay, sometimes perhaps delightful, and again of tempered charm–why, as to all this, what reck the spectators who are crowding out of the theatre and home to bed?

But it seems as if, in spite of certain drawbacks in Agatha Merceron’s character, nothing very dreadful can have happened, because Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth, who are very particular folk, went to stay at the Court the other day, and their only complaint was that Charlie and his bride were always at the Pool!

And, for his own part, if he may be allowed a word (which some people say he ought not to be) here, just at the end, the writer begs to say that he once knew Agatha, and–he would have taken the risks. However, a lady to whom he has shown this history differs entirely from him, and thinks that no sensible man would have married her. But, then, that is not the question.