tuft from the
bank as she spoke, and laid its moist blades in her lap.

"Then where's the omen?

"A silly one--an old Teutonic superstition. They believe that if the
second husband of a woman treads the grave of the first, the grass will
wave till the corpse awakes from its rest."

At this he chuckled joyously, her voice was so appropriately tragic.

"But here we've no second husbands, and no tombs; only a fanciful little
wife who has burst the bonds of the matter of fact."

"Was I so prosaic?" She stared at the dancing gnats and flicked at them
dreamily with her glove. "Ah, perhaps so--in the days when the pinch of
penury forced one to be tough and calculating. You could not imagine,
Harry, the fret of blue blood in starved veins. To be poor makes one
mean, grasping, heartless; once rich, we can become amiable, virtuous,
heroic even."

"And poetic, eh?" he said, flushing at the recollection of
transformations that his love and his wealth had wrought for Cinderella.
"Come, we must not forget the Lowthers' dinner, we're due there now."

With this he paddled out from their retreat, carefully--for the dusk was
closing round them--into the open river.

All along the banks a misty vapour, rising from the earth, twisted and
wreathed till it wrapped the tow-path in gloom. Deep shadows stretched
their quaint deformities fantastically across the wave, mingling
deceitfully with black clumps of tall reeds, into which the canoe
occasionally glided with a dangerous swish.

The distance from the backwater to the Reach was fortunately short.
Coloured lights from the numerous house-boats that were gathered in line
to view the morrow's regatta guided them, and from the merry laughter
which assailed their ears they learnt the geographical position of Sir
Eustace Lowther's floating fairyland, styled ironically "The Raft."

"We're famishing," roared someone from its balcony.

"So are we," came in duet from the canoe.

"Take care of the ice-box," called another voice from the gloom, as a
paddle hit some obstacle in the darkness.

"Fiz cooling," explained a guest, appreciatingly. "Your hand?"

Lady Rolleston gave it, and was escorted up the steps to the feasting
place.

It was set out with a studied view to polite vagabondage. Deftly
manoeuvred forks, two-pronged twigs mounted in silver, and clasp knives
with chased and monogrammed handles, garden lanterns in frames of
fretted iron, osier baskets bursting with an incongruo