Ready-tongued Cynthia was beginning to find detailed explanation rather difficult, and her speech reverted to the picturesque idioms of her native land. It was the happiest ruse she could have adopted. Everyone laughed at the notion of being “hiked out.” None of her hearers knew quite what it meant, yet it covered the requisite ground, which was more than might have been achieved by explicit English.
“Where did the accident take place?” asked the landlady.
Cynthia was vague on this point, but when she told how the return journey was made, the pretty Welsh waitress hit on a theory.
“In-deed to goot-ness, miss,” she cried, “you wass be-tween the Garren River an’ Huntsham Bridge. It iss a bad place, so it iss, however. Me an’ my young man wass shoaled there once, we wass.”
Cynthia felt that her face and neck had grown positively scarlet, and she could have kissed the well-disposed landlady for entering on a voluble disquisition as to the tricks played by the Wye on those unaware of its peculiarities, especially at night. A general conversation broke out, but Mrs. Devar, rapidly regaining her spirits after enduring long hours of the horrible obsession that Medenham had run off with her heiress, noted that telltale blush. At present her object was to assist rather than embarrass, so with a fine air of motherly solicitude she asked:
“Where did you leave Fitzroy?”
“He saw preparations being made to send boats in search of us, and he went to stop them. Oh, here he is!”
Medenham entered, and the impulsive Mrs. Devar ran to meet him. Though he had been in the river again only five minutes earlier, the walk up a dust-laden path had covered his sopping boots with mud, and in the not very powerful light of the hall, where a score or more of anxious people were collected, it was difficult to notice that his clothes were wet. But “Wiggy” Devar did not care now whether or not the story told by Cynthia was true. With reaction from the nightmare that had possessed her since ten o’clock came a sharp appreciation of the extraordinarily favorable turn taken by events so far as she was concerned. If a French count were to be supplanted by an English viscount, what better opportunity of approving the change could present itself?
“Mr. Fitzroy,” she said in her shrill voice, “I can never thank you sufficiently for the courage and resource you displayed in rescuing Miss Vanrenen. You have acted most nobly. I am only saying now what Mr. Vanrenen will say when his daughter and I tell him of your magnificent behavior.”
He reddened and tried to smile, though wishing most heartily that these heroics, if unavoidable, had been kept for some other time and place. He could not believe that Cynthia had exalted a not very serious incident into a “rescue,” yet she might be vexed if he cheapened his own services. In any event, it was doubtful whether she would wish her father to hear of the escapade until she told him herself at the close of the tour.