, but I am an indifferent sailor; and I trust
I have too much respect for myself and my new frocks, to crowd them into
a river cockboat!"

In a few minutes Joanna and the elder came in. He had called for her on
his way home; for he liked the society of the young and beautiful, and
there were many hours in which he thought Joanna fairer than her sister.
Then tea was served in a pretty parlour with Turkish walls and coloured
windows, which, being open into the garden, framed lovely living
pictures of blossoming trees. Every one was eating and drinking,
laughing and talking; so Katherine's unusual silence was unnoticed,
except by the elder, who indeed saw and heard everything, and who knew
what he did not see and hear by that kind of prescience to which wise
and observant years attain. He saw that the cakes Katherine dearly loved
remained upon her plate untasted, and that she was unusually,
suspiciously quiet.

After tea he walked down the garden with Colonel Gordon. The lily bed
was near the river; and he made the gathering of some lilies for
Katherine an excuse for going close enough to the pier to see how the
boat lay, and whether the oars had been moved from the exact position in
which he had placed them. And he found the boat rocking at its moorings,
tied with his own peculiar knot. It told him everything, and he was
sincerely troubled at the discovery.

[Illustration: In one of those tall-backed Dutch chairs]

"Love and lying," he mused. "I wonder why they are ever such thick
friends. As for Dick Hyde, lying is his native tongue; but if Katharine
Van Heemskirk has been aye one thing above another, it was to tell the
truth. It ought to come easy to her likewise, for I'll say the same o'
the hale nation o' Dutchmen. I dinna think Joris would tell a lie to
save baith life and fortune."

He looked at Katherine almost sternly when he went back to the house;
though he gave her the lilies, and bid her keep her soul sweet and pure
as their white bells. She was sitting by Mistress Gordon's side, in one
of those tall-backed Dutch chairs, whose very blackness and straightness
threw into high relief her own undulating roundness and mobility, the
glowing colours of her Indian silk gown, the shining amber against her
white throat, and the picturesque curl and flow of her fair hair.
Captain Hyde sat opposite, bending toward her; and his aunt reclined
upon the couch, and watched them with a singular look of speculation in
her