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knew.
    “A candle … a light, Mr. Bevil.” That was the woman.
    “Whoever is in the house is hiding here,” said Bevil Men-frey.
    He was pulling off the dust covers, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before he reached the dressing table.
    I looked up at him, and even at such a moment I thought how magnificent he looked in candlelight. He had become older since I last saw him. He was indeed a man. He looked enormously tall, and the candlelight threw a long shadow of him on the wall with the smaller figure of the woman cowering behind him.
    “Good God!” he cried. “It’s Harriet Delvaney. Come out you little wretch. What are you doing here?”
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    Menfreya in the Morning
    Victoria Holt
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    Then, stooping, he gripped me by the arm and pulled me up.
    “Can’t say I admire your choice of a residence. How long have you been here?”
    “This is the second night.”
    He turned to his companion, and I saw that she was a young and pretty girl whom I did not know.
    “Well. The mystery’s solved, then.”
    “What are you going to do, Mr. Bevil?” asked the girl; and then I knew that she was one of the village girls who wouldn’t be invited as a guest to Menfreya, so I wondered what she was doing here at this time of night with Bevil.
    “There’s only one thing to do. I’m going to row her straight back to the mainland; and well have to let her father know she’s found.”
    “Oh … the wicked little thing!”
    “And what about you?” I asked.
    That made Bevil laugh again. “Yes,” he said, “what about you and what about me? No recriminations on either side, eh, Harriet?”
    “No,” I said, not understanding, but suddenly almost happy—first, because I was not going to have to spend the rest of the night alone on the island, and secondly, because he was amused by what I had done and because I understood that, just as he had discovered me where I should not be, so bad I discovered him.
    He looked down at me. “You shouldn’t have left the candle burning,” he said. “Very careless. We saw the flickering light in the window almost as soon as we landed.” His face was suddenly stern. “Do you know, Miss Harriet, that there’s great consternation about you. They’ve all but decided to drag the Thames.”
    He was joking; but he was puzzled, and again I felt that glow of pleasure. Never before had I had his undivided attention; I could see that he had quite forgotten his companion.
    We went down to the boat, and in a short time we had reached the mainland.
    He said to the girl: “You go now.”
    Her mouth slackened and she looked at him in surprise, but he said impatiently, “Yes, go.”
    She gave him a rather sullen look and, lifting her skirts about her thighs, stepped over the side of the boat into the shallow water. Her feet were bare and she stood for a
    moment with the water lapping about her ankles to look back and see if Bevil was watching. He wasn’t He was looking at me, his hands resting on the oars.
    “Why did you do it?” he said.
    “I wanted to.”
    “You ran away to spend a night on that island?”
    “Not to do that.”
    “How did you get there?”
    I didn’t answer. I was not going to involve Gwennan.
    “You’re an odd child, Harriet,” he said. “I suspect that you worry too much about things that are not half as important as you imagine them to be.”
    “You can’t know how important my being lame is to me.” I was passionately angry suddenly. “You say it’s not important Nor is it to you. But you don’t have to limp about, do you? Of course, you can imagine it is not important It isn’t to you.”
    He looked startled. “My dear Harriet, how vehement you are. People don’t like you less for being lame. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But that’s not the question at the moment, is it? You have run away. There’s a great fuss about it. And now you are discovered. What are you going to do? You’re not planning to run away from me, are you?