Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out
through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad
stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun,
where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and
rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.

Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement
panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation;
he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, "Scotch or Irish,
sir," then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.

He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed
meditatively at space.

The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence
which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said:
"Here endeth our first rendezvous."

"Then let us arrange another immediately," he said, stirring the ice in
his glass.

The girl considered him with speculative eyes: "I shouldn't exactly know
what to do with you for the next hour if I didn't abandon you."

"Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble
of deserting me? That solves the problem."

"I really don't mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward," she
said, amused; "I mean that I am going to drive again."