It was a summer evening. The sun was setting beyond the Bristol Channel, and seeming to light its waves with fire. The rocks, the gardens and orchards along the shore, and all the villas of "the rising watering-place" were bathed in ruddy light, blended with a misty golden haze; and the warm glow fell on two bright faces in particular. When the oarsman looked with wonder at the changes on the shore, as he sometimes did, the girl looked at him, not in a way she was wont to do, but with a soft expression in her tender eyes that he would have given the world to have seen.
Anon, when at some distance from the shore, he rested on his skulls, leaving them in the rowlocks, while the boat floated idly on the sunlit water.
"Please do not do any more of that," said the young lady.
"Of what?" asked her companion.
"This tatooing," said she, pointing with her parasol to his handsome bare arms, on which he had punctured, in sailor fashion, a ship in full sail, three choughs, and other insignia known to himself alone.
"Ah! Joe Grummet did all these one evening, when we were standing off and on under easy sail near Cuba," said Derval, for the speaker was he, and the beautiful girl who sat opposite to him in the stern-sheets, and on the dainty cushions of the pleasure-boat, was Clara, Lord Oakhampton's only daughter.
And now to explain how all this came about, and that these two were so intimate.
Derval was not long in discovering, from the visitors' lists, that Lord Oakhampton had taken, for the summer months, a villa in Bayview Terrace, Finglecombe, but had ignored the existence of the widow of his late namesake.
This was nothing to Derval, who immediately called at the villa and sent up his card, and was warmly received by Lord Oakhampton, who, we have said, was a tall and handsome man, with stately manners. He was elderly now, with silvery hair, but his fine aquiline features were unchanged in noble outline and honesty of expression. After a few mutual remarks and inquiries,
"I called," said Derval, "to do myself the honour of personally thanking your Lordship for the medal for which you so kindly recommended me."