But the glint of the white dress on the bank opposite caught the rider’s eye. Up went his head. So too did that of the horse, jerked up suddenly by a violent wrench of the bridle. There was a prodigious splashing, stifling the horseman’s exclamation, as he plunged through the drift, and the water flew in great jets around. Then scarce had the dripping steed touched the opposite bank than the rider sprang to the ground and the waiting, expectant figure was folded tight in his arms.
“Oh, Maurice, darling, it is you at last!” she murmured, clinging to him in his close embrace. And then she felt that it was good indeed to live.
“Me? Rather! And ‘at last’ is about the word for it. And so my little girl has been waiting here for me ever since I went away. Confess! Hasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. This was always our favourite retreat, wasn’t it? Still, I thought just the very moment I happened to arrive you would be anywhere else—with the rest of the crowd. It’s just one’s luck as a rule. But mine is better this time—rather!”
“But—but—where’s Renshaw?” she asked, lifting her head, as she suddenly became alive to the other’s non-appearance. Sellon looked rather blank.
“H’m—ha!—Renshaw? Well—he isn’t here—hasn’t come, anyhow.”
“But—is he coming on after you?” she said, awake to the inconvenience of their first meeting being suddenly broken in upon.
“M—well. The fact is, Violet darling, you don’t care about anything or anybody now we are together again? The long and the short of it is, poor Fanning has rather come to grief!”
“Come to grief!” she echoed, wonderingly.