were the touch of her hands and the warmth of her lips as she lay on her back in the heather with his arms beneath her.
Then he was in the drawing-room, he was standing beside her, Bob Flower was saying something in his ear, everyone was talking, and laughing, and eating cake. He heard himself offering Bob a glass of Madeira.
'Father is at the mine,' Barbara was saying, 'but he will be home to dine with us at five, as usual.
You men had better get off to your fishing while the weather holds.'
'I should like to come,' said Fanny-Rosa. 'Does John not permit ladies in his boat?'
'Why, yes,' said John, 'why, yes '
And delightfully, joyfully, the whole day had to be planned afresh, for now that Fanny-Rosa would be of the party Jane would accompany her, and the Bule Rock being too far and the sea perhaps too rough for them, they must sail by the island instead, and more food must be put in the basket, and one of Barbara's shawls for Fanny- Rosa in case the wind freshened. What happiness in walking down to the creek, and bringing the boat to the steps, so that Jane and Fanny-Rosa might climb aboard, and then rolling his sleeves above his elbow, and shaking his hair back, and singing out to Bob to cast off from the moorings when the sail had been hoisted and the tiller shipped into place. Down the creek into the open waters of Doonhaven, with the long, straggling island ahead of him and the open sea beyond, and away on the left the great mass of Hungry Hill, green and shining under the sun.
How good to be no longer sullen and wretched and shy, hating himself for his moods, but instead to be doing the thing that he liked, to be sailing his boat, with the wind in his hair, and Fanny-Rosa in the stern beside him.
She had not changed, unless to be more lovely, and there was a grace about her that had not been before. The shawl Barbara had lent her was green, matching her eyes.
She had flung it carelessly about her shoulders, and she looked up at John and smiled, and the smile held a promise, and the promise breathed a hope.
'I hear that you know more about greyhound coursing than any man in the country,' she said. 'Tell me all you have been doing since I saw you last.'
He began to tell her about the greyhounds, at first with diffidence, thinking she would not listen, and then with increasing confidence, making her laugh with his account of the racing crowds, the owners with their petty jealousies and frequent dishonesty.
Bob showed interest too, and asked many questions. It was agreeable, thought John, to speak for once in a way as an authority, and to know that his opinion on the one subject in the world that he knew anything about was listened to with respect.
They anchored for a cold luncheon of meat patties and cress sandwiches on the westward side of Doon Island, and then Bob Flower, looking across at the garrison, bethought him of a friend of his, lately gone as Adjutant to the battalion quartered there, and suddenly there was a suggestion that the party should go ashore, and walk up to the Mess, and enquire after him. John glanced at his sister's innocent little face and wondered if Dick Fox was at this moment watching her through his telescope from the windows of the Mess.
When they came to the anchorage Fanny-Rosa declared that she preferred to stay in the boat; she had come to enjoy the water, not the doubtful claret at the garrison, and surely Jane was not likely to come to any harm with Bob as a companion, for Bob was known to be the soul of decorum. So Jane stepped ashore, looking very pretty and demure, on the stolid arm of Bob Flower, and it was quite a coincidence that Lieutenant Fox should at that moment be coming down the path to meet them.
John put the boat about and sailed eastwards, towards Hungry Hill, and now that he was alone with Fanny- Rosa a queer feeling of restraint came over him. He felt he could not speak, or whatever he said would sound foolish and forced. He kept his eye on the sail, and did not look at her. There, across the water, lay the land, and the great hill rising to the sky. It seemed remote and intangible, the summit golden in the sun, and he thought of the lake, how still it would be, and cold.
'Do you remember the picnic we had there, last September year?' said Fanny-Rosa.
John did not answer at once. He wanted to look at her but dared not. He hauled in the sheet a little closer.
'I think of it very often,' he said.
She moved slightly in the boat, arranging the cushion at her back, and now her arm rested against his knee, making a torment and a strange delight.
'We were very merry,' she said, 'very gay.'
She spoke softly, almost sadly, as though reflecting upon a past that could never come again, and John wondered whether it was his love-making in the heather that she remembered, or Henry's laughter and Henry's smile. The old jealousy swept upon him once more, the old anguish, and doubt, and indecision, and putting the boat suddenly about, he bore away from Hungry Hill, towards the open sea. The boat rocked slightly in the swell, and some water splashed in over the bows, trickling down towards her feet.
Fanny-Rosa took off her shoes without a word, and leant closer to John's knee.
'You saw much of Henry, did you not, those few months before he died?'
The words were out at last. He could hardly believe that he had said them. This time he forced himself to look at her, thinking he should see some trace of sorrow in her face to add to his pain, but her unconscious profile was turned towards the sea. She shook the spray from her hair, and tucked her slim, bare feet under her gown.
'Yes,' she said; 'he seemed to enjoy Naples. It was so unfortunate that he left when he did, tired and unwell. We all felt it very much.', Her voice was calm, conventional.
Surely if she had cared for him or he for her she would not have spoken thus?
'Henry always liked people, and new places. That is where we differed,' said John.
'You are not the slightest bit like him,' said Fanny-Rosa. 'You are much darker and broader.
Henry was more like Barbara.'
None of this matters, thought John, as the boat heeled in the freshening breeze, whether I am dark or Harry was fair, or who resembles whom. The only thing I would know is what they really felt for one another in Naples, and why Henry left so suddenly, and his health became worse. Had they loved, and had they quarrelled, and was the last person that his brother thought of lying there in that hotel bedroom in Sens the Fanny-Rosa who sat beside him now?
The boat dipped in the swell, and the sea sparkled in the sun, and Fanny-Rosa, laughing, knelt up against him and held on to his shoulder.
'Would you drown me?' she asked, pushing his hair back from his eyes.
'I would not,' he answered, putting the boat into the wind and leaving the tiller, with both arms around her while she kissed him on the mouth.
He understood then that he would never know what Henry had been to her in Naples, no one would know. If there was a story to tell of a man who went away from Italy bitter and disillusioned to die all alone in a little French hotel, the mystery would never be told.
The secret lay locked for all time in her heart.
John would wonder, and John would doubt, he would conjure pictures in his mind to the end of his days of those few months in Naples, and the senseless, futile jealousy would come to him again and again, but it would not be healed.
Henry was dead, Henry with his charm and his gaiety belonged no more to the things that were, and here was Fanny-Rosa alive in John's arms. Such sweet happiness could not turn to poison.
'Will you marry me, Fanny-Rosa?' he said.
She smiled, she pushed away his hands, and settled herself once more on the bottom boards of the boat.
'You will be swamping the boat if you do not look after it,' she said.
He seized the tiller and the sheet, and headed the boat again towards Doon Island.
'Will you not answer my question?' he asked her.
'I'm only twenty-one,' she said. 'I hardly think I want to marry yet awhile and settle down. There are still so many things that arc amusing to do.'
'What sort of things do you mean?'
'I like to travel. I like to go on the Continent. I like to do as I please.'
