"Then let us go down to the house-boat," Sir Geoffrey said. "I daresay Ralph can manage to amuse you somehow, and I want to talk to your mother."
"Do you want to talk to me, Ralph?" said Gwendolen, turning to her lover, who was looking at her with affectionate pride.
"I don't seem to have had a chance of talking to you for a week," Ralph answered promptly. "Let's go at once and—and get a deck chair ready for your mother."
Sir Geoffrey chuckled.
"An admirable reason for both of you hurrying away. Ralph is too weak to move one by himself; you must help him, Gwendolen."
Ralph put a wrap round Gwendolen, and, linking her arm in his, went through the French window across the garden.
It was a glorious night. A full moon shed a mellow splendour across the lawns, throwing the masses of the cedars into bold relief against the sky, and glinting in all the diamond panes of the heavy-leaded windows. Over the phloxes and tobacco plants that adorned the borders great moths were wheeling, and bats were flickering in and out of the plantation that screened the stables from the house. As the garden sloped towards the river the turf was more closely shaven, and along the water's edge were sunk pots in which magnificent geraniums and sweet heliotrope were growing.
Moored by the extreme boundary of the garden Ralph's house-boat lay; it contained a little bedroom and two sitting-rooms, fragrant with flowers and light with mirrors and thin curtains, and the upper part, covered in with a pale green awning, was a mass of flowers and palms. Here were deck chairs, and little tables, and Japanese lanterns.
Ralph put two chairs ready for Mrs. Austen and Sir Geoffrey, and then looked at Gwendolen.
"Shall we wait here for them, or would you like me to punt you up the stream?"