lth. He had been the
spoilt darling of his mother; and now, both his parents being dead, he
was alone in the world, heir to his father's revenues, and entire master
of his own actions. And as part of the penalty he had to pay for being
rich and good-looking to boot, he was so much run after by women that he
found it hard to understand the haughty indifference with which he had
just been treated by one of the most fair, if not the fairest of her
sex. He was piqued, and his _amour propre_ was wounded.

"I'm sure my question was harmless enough," he mused, half crossly, "She
might have answered it."

He glanced out impatiently over the Fjord. There was no sign of his
returning yacht as yet.

"What a time those fellows are!" he said to himself. "If the pilot were
not on board, I should begin to think they had run the _Eulalie_
aground."

He finished his cigar and threw the end of it into the water; then he
stood moodily watching the ripples as they rolled softly up and caressed
the shining brown shore at his feet, thinking all the while of that
strange girl, so wonderfully lovely in face and form, so graceful and
proud of bearing, with her great blue eyes and masses of dusky gold
hair.

His meeting with her was a sort of adventure in its way--the first of
the kind he had had for some time. He was subject to fits of weariness
or caprice, and it was in one of these that he had suddenly left London
in the height of the season, and had started for Norway on a yachting
cruise with three chosen companions, one of whom, George Lorimer, once
an Oxford fellow-student, was now his "chum"--the Pythias to his Damon,
the _fidus Achates_ of his closest confidence. Through the unexpected
wakening up of energy in the latter young gentleman, who was usually of
a most sleepy and indolent disposition, he happened to be quite alone on
this particular occasion, though, as a general rule, he was accompanied
in his rambles by one if not all three of his friends. Utter solitude
was with him a rare occurrence, and his present experience of it had
chanced in this wise. Lorimer the languid, Lorimer the lazy, Lorimer who
had remained blandly unmoved and drowsy through all the magnificent
panorama of the Norwegian coast, including the Sogne Fjord and the
toppling peaks of the Justedal glaciers; Lorimer who had slept
peacefully in a hammock on deck, even while the yacht was passing under
the looming splendors of Melsnipa; Lorimer, now that he had