g at times to his companion's, which steadily
fronted the gale. She left the ensuing to a prayer for their good
direction, with a chuckle at Tony's evident feeling of a ludicrous
posture, and the desperate rush of her agile limbs to have it over. But
her prayer throbbed almost to a supplication that the wrong done to her
beloved by Dacier--the wound to her own sisterly pride rankling as an
injury to her sex, might be cancelled through the union of the woman
noble in the sight of God with a more manlike man.

Meanwhile the feet of the couple were going faster than their heads
to the end of the journey. Diana knew she would have to hoist the
signal-and how? The prospect was dumb-foundering. She had to think of
appeasing her Emma. Redworth, for his part; actually supposed she had
accepted his escorting in proof of the plain friendship offered him
overnight.

'What do your "birds" do in weather like this?' she said.

'Cling to their perches and wait patiently. It's the bad time with them
when you don't hear them chirp.'

'Of course you foretold the gale.'

'Oh, well, it did not require a shepherd or a skipper for that.'

'Your grand gift will be useful to a yachtsman.'

'You like yachting. When I have tried my new schooner in the Channel,
she is at your command for as long as you and Lady Dunstane please.'

'So you acknowledge that birds--things of nature--have their bad time?'

'They profit ultimately by the deluge and the wreck. Nothing on earth is
"tucked-up" in perpetuity.'

'Except the dead. But why should the schooner be at our command?'

'I shall be in Ireland.'

He could not have said sweeter to her ears or more touching.

'We shall hardly feel safe without the weatherwise on board.'

'You may count on my man Barnes; I have proved him. He is up to his
work even when he's bilious: only, in that case, occurring about once a
fortnight, you must leave him to fight it out with the elements.'

'I rather like men of action to have a temper.'

'I can't say much for a bilious temper.'

The weather to-day really seemed of that kind, she remarked. He
assented, in the shrug manner--not to dissent: she might say what she
would. He helped nowhere to a lead; and so quick are the changes of mood
at such moments that she was now far from him under the failure of an
effort to come near. But thoughts of Emma pressed.

'The name of the new schooner? Her name is her picture to me.'

'I wanted you to christen her.'