“Without letting me know where to find you,” he said.

She glanced over his shoulder as if measuring the distance between the skiff and the landing-stage.  “No, I don’t promise that.  It wouldn’t be fair.  But you will be able to trace me by Columbus.  He will certainly accompany the cat’s-meat cart wherever it goes.  Oh, Dick!  There’s someone there—­waiting for us!”

He also threw a look behind him.  “Shall I put her about?  I don’t see anyone, but if you wish it—­”

“No, no, I don’t!  Row straight in!  There is someone there, and you’ll have to apologize.  I knew we were being watched.”

Juliet sat upright with a flushed face.

Dick began to laugh.  “Dear, dear!  How tragic!  Never mind, darling!  I daresay it’s no one more important than a keeper, and we will see if we can enlist his sympathy.”

He pulled a few swift strokes and the skiff glided up to the little landing-stage.  He shipped the sculls, and held to the woodwork with one hand.

“Will you get ashore, dear, and I’ll tie up.  There’s no one here, you see.”

“No one that matters,” said a laughing voice above him, and suddenly a man in a white yachting-suit, slim, dark, with a monkey-like activity of movement, stepped out from the spreading shadow of a beech.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Dick, startled.

“Hullo, sir!  Delighted to meet you.  Madam, will you take my hand?  Ah—­et tu, Juliette! Delighted to meet you also.”

He was bowing with one hand extended, the other on his heart.  Juliet, still seated in the stern of the boat, had gone suddenly white to the lips.

She gasped a little, and in a moment forced a laugh that somehow sounded desperate.  “Why, it is Charles Rex!” she said.

Dick’s eyes came swiftly to her.  “Who?  Lord Saltash, isn’t it?  I thought so.”  His look flashed back to the man above him with something of a challenge.  “You know this lady then?”

Two eyes—­one black, one grey—­looked down into his, answering the challenge with gay inconsequence.  “Sir, I have that inestimable privilege. Juliette, will you not accept my hand?”

Juliet’s hand came upwards a little uncertainly, then, as he grasped it, she stood up in the boat.  “This is indeed a surprise,” she said, and again involuntarily she gasped.  “Rumour had it that you were a hundred miles away at least.”

“Rumour!” laughed Lord Saltash.  “How oft hath rumour played havoc with my name!  Not an unpleasant surprise, I trust?”

He handed her ashore, laughing on a note of mockery.  Charles Burchester, Lord Saltash, said to be of royal descent, possessed in no small degree the charm not untempered with wickedness of his reputed ancestor.  His friends had dubbed him “the merry monarch” long since, but Juliet had found a more dignified appellation for him which those who knew him best had immediately adopted.  He had become Charles Rex from the day she had first bestowed the title upon him.  Somehow, in all his varying—­sometimes amazing—­moods, it suited him.