"Never had any luck," muttered the other, "except with the birds."

"Luck! I like that! You call it luck when you never miss; I a.s.sure you, Miss Strong," he continued, going up to where the despondent captain was standing, and addressing the nearest lady, "I was out with him yesterday, and he made me feel such a duffer. The prettiest shooting, and then he calls it luck!"

Cynthia Strong looked from one to the other of those two vigorous young faces before her, and then at the professor's pale one. A cold in the head is not becoming, and she sighed.

Rick, with the ring still in his possession, returned to Lady Maud.

"Isn't it quaint?" he said. "Don't you wish I could find another?"

"Why?"

"Because it would be yours, of course. How small it looks! I wonder if it would fit you."

"Miss Macdonald found it too large for her," remarked the professor, still more gloomily; "but it would be interesting, Lady Maud, to try whether it points to any improvement or deterioration--physical, of course--in the race."

"Perhaps you ladies would not mind experimenting 'Cinderella and the little gla.s.s slipper,'" laughed Eustace Gordon. "What is to be the prize, Endorwick--the ring?"

"My dear sir," gasped the professor, horrified for once out of his gallantry, "it's unique--positively unique."

"I'll tell you what," put in Rick eagerly, "if the professor will lend it to me for a couple of days, I'll copy it in silver. A florin would make it, and the inscriptions only scratched on. So now, then, ladies, if you please. Weeks, you do herald. Lady Maud, may we use the banner screen as a tabard?"

"What a boy that is!" said fat Lady Liddell to her next-door neighbour. "I've been here a fortnight, and never saw him out of temper or out of spirits. So different from most young people nowadays, who won't take the trouble to enjoy themselves."

"I knew it wouldn't go on anybody's finger but yours," said Rick with joyous confidence to his G.o.ddess when the compet.i.tion was over.

"Perhaps it wasn't quite fair, because I'd seen Aunt Will try it on so often, and her hands are tiny."

Lady Maud shook her head gravely. "I'm afraid it wasn't quite fair; but you must make me the ring, for all that."

"Of course I'll make it!"

She put her hand on his suddenly. "Don't, Rick! don't! I mean"--she paused, looking at him curiously--"you may make it if you like, Rick; but I won't promise to wear it--always."

VI

"We ought to have gone over to-day," said Eustace Gordon, looking out to where the low sandy line of Eilean-a-fa-ash lay like a golden clasp between the two headlands. The northern one bold, rocky, heathery; the southern, a mere spit of bent-covered shingle, curving hornlike from the great sweep of the Grada Sands beyond. It was sunset,--a cloudless sunset. Sky, and sea, and sand, bathed in a golden flood of light; only the shallow stretches of water left behind by the retreating tide glowing iridescent here and there like jewels. Far away, almost beyond sight, an edge of foam keeping time to a whispering cadence told where the Atlantic was hushing the sh.o.r.e to sleep.

"Yes!" he went on lazily. "We ought, but we didn't. That fellow Weeks is always on the slay."

They were seated, a party of five,--for the professor still lingered in the grip of cold,--on the base of the northern headland. There, amongst the rocks and heather, Lady Maud and Cynthia Strong had been making tea for the shooters. A brace of setters lay panting beside the game-bags; a faint whiff of smoke from behind a boulder told that the ghillies were enjoying themselves on their master's tobacco--sure sign of a good day's sport.

"Gorgeous weather," continued the same contented voice, "a whole week of it; simply idyllic."

"Ever since Mr. Wilson and the others left," a.s.sented Rick Halmar.

"Pity they went, isn't it?"

"Mr. Wilson had to go," put in Lady Maud. "The telegram from the works was urgent, and then the Collinghams' yacht happening to come in the same day made it so convenient. Quite a coincidence; one of those things no one could have foreseen." She spoke impatiently, almost in an aggrieved tone; and Eustace, as he lay on his back staring up into the sky, smiled to himself.

"It is very curious how such things happen," remarked Cynthia Strong; "but that they are comparatively common is indubitable. The very proverbs in our language prove it." In the professor's absence she was apt to a.s.sume the mantle of his manner in order to annihilate poor Captain Weeks, in which object she generally succeeded. On this occasion, however, emboldened by a recent reception of some golden plovers' wings, for which her new tweed hat had been waiting, he ventured to put in his oar. "The wish is father to the thought, for instance."

"Nothing of the kind--" began Miss Strong scornfully; but Lady Maud rose hastily and, standing a little apart, looked at Eilean-a-fa-ash, her hand shading her eyes.

"Let us settle to go there to-morrow without fail," she said as if to change the subject.

"Not to-morrow, please," broke in Rick eagerly. "To-morrow is Fast Day, and none of the ghillies will do a hand's turn. Besides, I have to drive Aunt Will to the preaching, as uncle won't. Put it off till the next day, Lady Maud. To begin with, it's my birthday, and then the tides are full spring. So we could come back by the sea ford. It is worth doing; nearly two miles with quicksands on either side, especially to the south."

"Very well, the day after to-morrow; that is, Friday certain; or some other coincidence will be carrying off the rest of my party." Still with her hand shading her eyes, she remained looking seawards, much in the same att.i.tude as she had stood at the window a month before. This time her slight figure showed against the gold of sea and sky.

"What is that," she asked, "like a mast--yonder and from the headland?"

Rick, busy as usual with his knife, did not pause to look. "It _is_ a mast, Lady Maud. There is a wreck just to the south. Went ash.o.r.e ever so long ago, but it is useful still as a sign-post. Up to that spar the sand is pretty safe--most times. Beyond that--by George! you should see it when the tide is coming in."

"Oh! I don't mean the spar close in--yonder, far away."

He came and stood by her. "A yacht, I think, making, I should say, for Carbost. Come to carry some of us away, maybe."

"If it's for me," remarked Eustace, joining them, "I don't intend to go. This is too good a time to be cut short. I haven't had such a good one since those old days at Lynmouth, Maud! And you too! Why, you are looking twice as well as you did--a week ago." There was meaning in his words; more in his eyes.

"Fine weather always agrees with me," she replied hastily. "Come, Rick, let us pick up the tea things and start home."

Yet in her heart of hearts she knew that Eustace was right. That past week had been a paradise of relief, and now it came perilously near to the time when the problem of her life must be faced. She had driven round it so far, had turned back deliberately when she found it barring the road, had claimed time to understand the position. What had she done towards a decision? Nothing! Nothing save bask in the immediate freedom; rejoice like any child in the fine weather, in Rick's open adoration, in her cousin's constant companionship.

As she and the boy walked homewards together, these thoughts came again and again, whilst her nervous fingers busied themselves mechanically with the silver ring which he had made for her; a growing habit of which she was not aware.

"Does it hurt you?" he asked tenderly. "I can easily alter it, if it does."

She shook her head with a faint smile.

"But I have seen you do that so often lately," he persisted; "perhaps the inside is not quite smooth. Give it me, please, and I will set it right by Friday."

"Don't trouble. If it hurts, I can always take it off; can't I, dear?"

There was a sudden pa.s.sion in her tone, a kind of pitiful reproach in her eyes. Rick looked at her, perturbed.

"But if it hurts--" he began.

She put out her pretty hand and laid it on his, almost with a protecting gesture. "Nothing you could do would hurt me, Rick. You said so the first time we met, and it is true. If it hurts, it is my own fault."

"That doesn't make any difference," he replied stoutly. "Let me have it, please."

"Not to-day--on Friday, perhaps; _if it hurts_."

They were standing where the cross-path branched to Eval, waiting for the others to come up; for Rick's way lay across the moor and she would be left alone.

"I believe it does hurt now," he said, still dissatisfied, "and I know I could set it right. Do let me try."