the edge
of the waves.

CHAPTER XXI

THE TRAP CLOSES

Miss Sarah Dymmock threw down the piece of old-fashioned embroidery on
which she had been engaged since dinner, yawning aggressively.

"I'm a sleepy old woman, and I shall go to bed," she remarked with a
snap. "Young people nowadays are bad company, though I suppose I ought
to make allowances for you, Vi, as a what-d'you-call-it."

"That's a vague term, auntie," said Violet Maynard with a wan smile. In
the absence of Montague Maynard in London the two ladies had been
spending the evening alone, and the girl's nerves were all on edge at
the prospect of the coming interview with her lover. The spacious
drawing-room at the Manor House had seemed like a prison, and dear Aunt
Sarah's fluent talk like the chatter of a persistent parrot. Violet was
annoyed with herself for her irritation, but she was nearly beside
herself with an intense craving to stand face to face with Leslie and
appeal to his manhood not to fly from the charge against him. The
dragging hours had seemed interminable, since Travers Nugent's
disclosure of Leslie's intended escape by sea.

"By a what-d'you-call-it I mean a prospective victim on the altar of
Hymen," explained the old lady, rising and gathering up her work. "If I
had ever been in love, which God in his mercy has spared me, I should
have been pirouetting all over the place instead of sitting mum-chance
and twiddling my thumbs. By the way, why hasn't your young man been out
here to-day. Is he cooling off already?"

"I can hardly expect him to dance attendance on me always, can I,
auntie?" replied Violet, making a brave effort to appear playful. She
was wondering how she should explain on the morrow that her lover had
been skulking somewhere all day preparatory to decamping altogether, if
she failed to prevent him from adopting that disgraceful course.

Aunt Sarah sniffed as she took her bedroom candle. "I wasn't thinking of
his dancing attendance on you, but on me," she rejoined, working herself
into an entirely spurious passion. "I wanted him to sign the documents
for the transfer of the securities I am making over to him, but I
suppose that he has had other fish to fry. You'll have to teach him
manners, child, when you're married--or at any rate attention to his own
interests."

The little wizened old woman pecked at the pale cheek which her
great-niece offered her, and stumped out of the room. Violet breathed a
sigh of r