With a moan, the bride pronounced for the boat, which was a big flat-bottomed punt, as reliable in appearance as pictures of John Bull.  I fetched her rugs from the car.  She was helped into the boat, and then, as my fate remained to be settled, I asked her in a voice soft as silk what were her wishes in regard to her handmaiden.

“Why, you’ll come with us in the boat, of course.  What else did you dream?” she replied sharply.

Down went my heart with a thump like a fish dropping off its hook.  But as I would have moved toward the pebbly beach, a champion rode to my defence.

“Your ladyship doesn’t think a load of five might disturb the balance of the boat?” mildly suggested the chauffeur.  “The usual load is two passengers and two boatmen; and though there’s no danger in the rapids if—­”

She did not give him time to finish.  “Oh, very well, you must stop with the car, Elise,” said she.  “It is only one inconvenience more, among many.  No doubt I can put up with it.  Get me the brandy flask out of the tea-basket.”

I would have tried to scoop all the green cheese out of the moon for her, if she had asked me, I was so delighted.  And part of my joy was mixed up with the thought that he wanted me to be with him.  He had actually schemed to get me!  I envied no one in the world, not even the lovely lady of the battlement garden.  He was mine for to-day, in spite of her—­so there!

Sir Samuel got into the boat, and wrapped his wife in rugs.  The boatmen pushed off.  Away the flat-bottomed punt slid down the clear green stream, the sun shining, the cascades sparkling, the strange precipices which wall the gorge, copper-tinted in the morning light.  It was the most wonderful world; yet Lady Turnour was cackling angrily.  Was she afraid?  Had she changed her mind?  No, the saints be praised!  She was only burning holes in her petticoat on the brazier supplied by the hotel!  I turned away to hide a smile almost as wicked as a grin, and before I looked round again, the swift stream had swept the boat out of sight round a jutting corner of rock.  We were safe.  This time it really was our world, our car, and our everything.  We didn’t even need to “pretend.”

Ste. Enemie is only at the gates of the gorge—­a porter’s lodge, so to speak, and in the Aigle we sped on into the fairyland of which we’d had our first pale, moonlit peep last night.  There were castles made by man, and castles made by gnomes; but the gnomes were the better architects.  Their dwellings, carved of rock, towered out of the river to a giddy height, and some were broken in half, as if they had been rent asunder by gnome cannon, in gnome battles.  There were gnome villages, too, which looked exactly like human habitations, with clustering roofs plastered against the mountain-side.  But the hand of man had not placed one of these stones upon another.