"There's your Bullgine," cried Du Meresq, with some alacrity. "I daresay it has been there an hour: no fear of losing a train in this leisurely country!"
"Well, adieu, Miss Rolleston; I trust you will not suffer from your soaking. You will have an hour or two to wait, I am afraid, before the gale goes down, and Du Meresq will hardly fulfil his promise of getting you home in good time for dinner."
"We are only too lucky to require another dinner; but I suppose we shall be in an awful scrape," answered Cecil, speaking quickly and nervously, for somehow she began to half dread being alone with Bertie. "Good-bye, Captain Lascelles. Here's your coat, which you were so good as to spare me; I am afraid it is not a valuable acquisition in its present spongy state;" and "Good-bye, old man," from the two friends as Lascelles ran off; shooting a momentary humorous glance of intelligence at Du Meresq.
The former, as he settled himself in the locomotive, thought rather seriously of the "situation" he had left his friend in. He rather wondered at Bertie, who appeared dangerously in earnest this time. To be sure, she was a nice enough girl, and very "coiny," he believed; but though convinced that such a marriage would be a piece of good fortune for his friend, remembering the convenience of their mutual partnership, he sincerely hoped he would "behave badly," and get out of the scrape somehow.
CHAPTER XXII.
AT LAST.
The breeze was dead,
The leaf lay without whispering in the tree;
We were together.
How, where, what matter? Somewhere in a dream,
Drifting, slow drifting down a wizard stream.
The Wanderer.
"It is just as well," said Du Meresq, laughing, "we have not got to take him back again. The experiment of three in that birchen bark is too expensive to repeat; and we could not throw him over as a Jonah, since he is the only one of us who can swim."