shore.

Unlike the ocean, the lake is fixed; but that day the increase of the
waves, in height and fury, had the effect of a rising tide. I realized
that it would be very difficult for me to get off the pier alone, and I
was more than relieved to see Randolph Chance, who had come down for a
look at the lake before taking his train to the city. He joined me
without trouble; a man can perform those feats so easily, whereas a
woman is physically hampered.

"You're in rather a bleak place, Miss Leigh," he said.

"Yes, I have just begun to realize that."

"Oh, well, we'll manage to get off safely; but you mustn't mind a little
wetting. Just give yourself to me, and we'll be on shore in a minute."

I gladly did as he bade me; it was luxury just then to have some one as
strong and capable as he take the reins. He led me around the bathing
house, and then lifted me from the pier. As he set me safely on the
shore, his eyes met mine, and his look was a revelation to me. I was,
for a moment, too startled to think, and the strangest sensation I ever
experienced crept over me. If a look could speak, Randolph Chance--but I
did not put it into words--not then, at least, but it was all very
strange to me--most inexplicable.

We walked on quietly, both, I dare say, feeling our silence to be a
trifle awkward. It was for this reason that I decided to shorten the
time of our being together, by stopping at the house of a friend. The
wetting I had received from the waves did not amount to anything for one
so hardy as myself, so I was not deterred on that account.

The house where I stopped was a pleasant resort for me. Both Mr. and
Mrs. Bachelor were interesting people. I had known Mr. Bachelor for
fifteen years. He had once been one of our young men, as the saying is,
young merely in the sense of being single, not in actual years, for at
the time I met him he was nearer the forty than the thirty line. Nature
seemed to have marked him for single--cussedness, I had almost said,
from the first. He was no favorite with any set, being grumpy, fussy,
and peculiar. But five years after he rose into sight above my horizon
he married a most sensible, lovely woman; not a child, by the way, for
she was almost forty; and in less than no time, it seemed to us, had a
family of four children about him, one following the other so closely
that the predecessor was all but overtaken. At first we said among
ourselves that he must have borrowed these inf