The new-comer looked at her with that twinkle in his eyes which she had already found it so difficult to meet. In spite of the singularity of his appearance, his manner was as imperturbable as ever.
"My dear Miss Gilbert, the greatest joke. I have always wondered what it would feel like to swim in your best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and now I've had such a chance of finding out. Only you can take it from me that, in the water, patent-leather buttoned boots are a mistake. I had to take mine off. And as I'm not quite sure where I left them, I must beg you to forgive me if, for the moment, my feet are only concealed from your sight by socks. May I ask you to do me the honour of making me known to this gentleman, and this gentleman to me."
Dorothy looked as if she did not know what to make of him; one had a notion that she had not once known what to make of him, since the moment of their first meeting.
"But you--you look as if you had been nearly drowned."
"Not at all; merely moistened. Between ourselves, I am not sure whether, on a night like this, it is drier in the river, or out of it. What did you say was this gentleman's name?"
"This is Mr Arnecliffe."
"And I am the Earl of Strathmoira. May I take it, Mr Arnecliffe, that you are an old friend of Miss Gilbert's?"
"I am an old friend of her father's; and I should have hoped, if time had permitted, to have become also a friend of his daughter's; but--time doesn't permit."
"Doesn't it? Is that so? Why doesn't time permit?"
Dorothy burst out, with sudden warmth: "I wish you wouldn't talk like that! I wish you wouldn't!"