The professor's answer need not be recorded. It was satisfactory.
It is a curious thing that the "sixth sense," which draws our thoughts to long-forgotten friends just before we hear from them, which leads our eyes to meet other eyes fixed earnestly upon them, which enables people to wake other people by staring at them, and does a variety of similar things, admitted, but not accounted for, fails to warn the victims of approaching fate. Serenely, blissfully, did Mr. Symington wend his way to the bank on that golden afternoon. It had occurred to him to exchange his faultless and too expensive boating-costume for a cheap jersey and trousers; but he feared that this might excite suspicion: he had still sense enough left to be aware that there had been no shadow of this in the sweet blue eyes yesterday.
He had not sung
She'd a rose in her bonnet, and, oh, she looked sweet!
more than five hundred times since the previous evening: so, by way of variety, he was humming it softly to himself as he approached the bank. He was a little early, of course. She had not come yet. So he dusted the cushions, and sponged up a few drops of water from the bottom of the boat, and then sat down to wait. He was not kept waiting long. He heard voices approaching, then a clear, soft laugh, and she was there; but—oh, retribution!—with her, supporting her on his arm, was Professor Silex! Wild thoughts of leaping into the river and swimming—under water—to the opposite bank passed through the brain of this victim of his own duplicity; but he checked himself sternly,—he was proposing to himself to act the part of a coward, and before her, of all the world. No, he would face the music, were it the "Rogue's March" itself. And then a faint, a very faint hope sprang up in his heart: the professor was noted for his absent-mindedness: perhaps there would be no recognition. Vain delusion.
"Your boatman has not kept his appointment," said the professor, advancing inexorably down the bank; "but I see a member of my class—an unusually promising young man—with whom I wish to speak. Will you excuse me for a moment?"
Rosamond turned her puzzled face from one to the other, finally ejaculating, "Why, that's the ferryman!"
"There is some mistake here," said the professor, unaware of the sternness of his tones.
They had continued to advance as they spoke, and the ferryman could not avoid hearing the last words. He sprang from the boat and up the bank with the expression of a whole forlorn hope storming an impregnable fortress, and spoke before the professor could ask a question.
"I beg your pardon, Professor Silex," he said; "there is no mistake. Miss—this lady, who is, I imagine, Miss May" (the professor bowed gravely), "was looking yesterday for the old man who acts as ferryman here sometimes. He was absent, and, seeing that Miss May seemed disturbed, I volunteered to take his place. It gave me great pleasure to be of even that small amount of use."