"Jennifer is bringing the ferry-boat across," she said presently, "so you won't have to wait much longer. Not that you need be at all anxious about those letters. It is not my father's habit to forget a promise. Most likely they were written last night before he went to bed. He sleeps badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by reading and doing his correspondence until late."
As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the hem of her dress.
"There—that's better. Now I am tidy. Shall we go home, cousin Tom?" she asked.
Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly, but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity—and at her expense—regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had sprung on him.
"I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness," he said. "It must be horribly trying and depressing. I am glad, in a way, you have told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden from the study last night, or rather very early this morning. It would be about two o'clock. I put down his appearance to another cause, and"—
He smiled at her, delightfully ingratiating, assaugingly apologetic.
"Shall I own it?—one which, frankly, struck me as a little upsetting and the reverse of pleasant."
"Weren't you comfortable? I am so sorry," Damaris exclaimed, instincts of hospitality instantly militant. "What was wrong? You should have called someone—rung for Hordle. What was it?"
"No—no—my dear Damaris, don't vex yourself I entreat you. I was in clover, luxuriously comfortable. You've allotted me a fascinating room and perfect dream of a bed. I feel an ungrateful wretch for so much as mentioning this matter to you after the way in which you have indulged me. Only something rather extraordinary really did happen, of which I honestly confess I am still expiring to find a reasonable and not too humiliating explanation. For, though I blush to own it"—
He laughed softly, humping up his shoulders after the manner of a naughty small boy dodging a well-merited box on the ear.—