Medenham took her arm again, for the road was dark where there were trees.

"You are not to think about it," he said. "I have been doing all the talking to-night. Now tell me something of your wanderings abroad."

These two already understood each other without the spoken word. He respected her desire to sheer off anything that might be construed as establishing a new relationship between them, and she appreciated his restraint to the full. They discussed foreign lands and peoples until the road bent toward the river again and the ferry was reached--at a point quite half a mile below the hotel.

And there was no boat!

A wire rope drooped into the darkness of the opposite bank, but no voice answered Medenham's hail. Cynthia said not a syllable until her companion handed her his watch with a request that she should hold it.

"You are not going into that river," she cried determinedly.

"There is not the slightest risk," he said.

"But there is. What if you were seized with cramp?"

"I shall cling to the rope, if that will satisfy you. I have swum the Zambesi before to-day, not from choice, I admit, and it is twenty times the width of the Wye, while it holds more crocodiles than the Wye holds salmon."

"Well--if you promise about the rope."

Soon he was out of sight, and her heart knew its first pang of fear.

Then she heard his cry of "Got the boat," followed by the clank of a sculling oar and the creak of the guiding-wheel on the hawser.

At last, shortly before midnight, they neared the hotel. Lights were visible on the quay, and Medenham read their meaning.

"They are sending out a search party," he said. "I must go and stop them. You run on to the hotel, Miss Vanrenen. Good-night! I shall give you an extra hour to-morrow."

She hesitated the fraction of a second. Then she extended a hand.

"Good-night," she murmured. "After all, I have had a real lovely time."

Then she was gone, and Medenham turned to thank the hotel servants and others who were going to the rescue.

"I wonder what the guv'nor will say when he sees Cynthia," he thought, with the smile on his face of the lover who deems his lady peerless among her s.e.x. He recalled that moment before many days had pa.s.sed, and his reflections then took a new guise, for not all the knowledge and all the experience a man may gather can avail him a whit to forecast the future when Fate is spinning her complex web.

CHAPTER X

THE HIDDEN FOUNTS OF EVIL

It was a flushed and somewhat breathless Cynthia who ran into the quiet country hotel at an hour when the Licensing Laws of Britain have ordained that quiet country hotels shall be closed. But even the laws of the Medes and Persians, which altered not, must have bulged a little at times under the pressure of circ.u.mstances. The daughter of an American millionaire could not be reported as "missing" without a buzz of commotion being aroused in that secluded valley. As a matter of fact, no one in the house dreamed of going to bed until her disappearance was accounted for, one way or the other.

Mrs. Devar, now really woebegone, screamed shrilly at sight of her.

The lady's nerves were in a parlous condition--"on a raw edge" was her own phrase--and the relief of seeing her errant charge again was so great that the shriek merged into a sob.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she wept, "what a shock you have given me! I thought you were gone!"

"Not so bad as that," was the contrite answer. Cynthia interpreted "gone" as meaning "dead," and naturally read into the other woman's anxiety her own knowledge of the disaster to the boat. "We had a bit of an upset--that is all--and the bread always flops to the floor b.u.t.tered side down, doesn't it? So we had to struggle ash.o.r.e on the wrong bank. It couldn't be helped--that is, the accident couldn't--but I ought not to have been on the river at such a late hour. Do forgive me, dear Mrs. Devar!"

By this time the girl's left arm was around her friend's portly form; in her intense eagerness to a.s.suage Mrs. Devar's agitation she began to stroke her hair with the disengaged hand. A deeply sympathetic landlady, a number of servants, and most of the feminine guests in the hotel--all the men were down on the quay--had gathered to murmur their congratulations; but Mrs. Devar, dismayed by Cynthia's action, which might have brought about a catastrophe, revived with phenomenal suddenness.

"My dear child," she cried, extricating herself from the encircling arm, "_do_ let me look at you! I want to make sure that you are not injured. The boat upset, you say. Why, your clothes must be wringing wet!"

Cynthia laughed. She had guessed why her chaperon wished to keep her literally at arm's length. She spread her skirts with a quick gesture that relieved an awkward situation.

"Not a drop on my clothes," she said gleefully. "The water just touched the soles of my boots, but before you could say 'Jack Robinson' Fitzroy had whisked me out of the skiff--and landed me on dry land."

"You were in shallow water, then?" put in the smiling proprietress.

"Oh no, fairly deep. Fitzroy was up to his waist in the stream."

"And the boat upset?" came the amazed chorus.

"I didn't quite mean that. What actually happened was this. I discovered that the hour was rather late, and Fitzroy was rowing down stream at a great pace when some sunken thing, a tree-root he thinks, caught the side of the boat and started a plank. I was so taken by surprise that I should have sat right there and gone to the bottom with the boat, but Fitzroy jumped overboard straight away and hiked me out."

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. .h.i.t on a theory.

"In-deed to goot-ness, miss," she cried, "you wa.s.s be-tween the Garren River an' Huntsham Bridge. It iss a bad place, so it iss, however. Me an' my young man wa.s.s shoaled there once, we wa.s.s."

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 a.s.sist rather than embarra.s.s, 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 n.o.bly. 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.

"I am sure Miss Vanrenen felt safe while in my care," was all he dared to say, but Cynthia promptly understood his perplexity and came to his aid.

"Mrs. Devar thinks far more of our adventure than we do," she broke in. "Our chief difficulty lay in finding the road. The only time I felt worried was when you crossed the river to retrieve the ferryboat.

But surely I have caused enough excitement for to-night. You ought to take some hot lemonade and go to bed."

A man who had walked up the hill from the boathouse with Medenham laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Come along, old chap!" he cried. "You certainly want a hot draught of some sort, and you must not hang about in those wet clothes."

"Yes," purred Mrs. Devar, "don't run the risk of catching cold, Fitzroy. It would spoil everything if _you_ were laid up."