Mona did not go to Surbiton, after all, that day. She telegraphed to her friend from Clapham Junction, and then she and Ralph took the train to Richmond.
"Let me take you for a pull on the river," he had said. "I have never done anything for you in my life, and my arms just ache to be used in your service. Oh Mona, Mona, Mona! it seems too good to be possible that you are still the same simple, true-hearted girl that I knew at Castle Maclean. By the way, do you know that Castle Maclean is yours for life now? At least Carlton Lodge is, and only the sea-gulls are likely to dispute my princess's claim to her battlements."
He handed her into a boat, and rowed out into the middle of the river.
"Now," he said, "you shall see what your slave's muscles are worth."
Like an arrow the little boat shot through the water in the sunshine, and Mona laughed with delight at the exhilaration of the swift rushing movement.
"That will do, Dr Dudley," she said at last. "Don't kill yourself."
"I don't answer to the name," he said shortly, pulling harder than ever.
"Oh, do please stop!" she cried.
"Who is to stop?" he panted, determined not to give in.
There was a moment's pause. A deep rosy colour settled on her eager face.
"Ralph," she said, scarcely above a whisper.
The oars came to a standstill with a splash in the middle of a stroke, and Ralph leaned forward with a low delighted laugh. Then he sighed.
"You had no eyes for me last night, Mona," he said.
"Had not I?"
"Had you?" very eagerly.
But when the language of looks and smiles begins, the historian does well to lay aside his pen. Are not these things written in the memory of every man and woman who has lived and loved?
Not that there was any lack of words between them that day. They had such endless arrears of talk to make up; and a strange medley it would have sounded to a third pair of ears. Now they were laughing over incidents in their life at Borrowness, now exchanging memories of childhood, and now consulting each other about puzzling cases they had seen in hospital.
It was a long cloudless summer day, and for these two it was one of those rare days when the cup of pure earthly happiness brims over, and merges into something greater. Every simple act of life took on a fresh significance now that it was seen through the medium of a double personality; every trifling experience was full of flavour and of promise, like the first-fruits of an infinite harvest.
What is so hard to kill as the illusions of young love? Crushed to-day under the cynicism and the grim experience of the ages, they raise their buoyant heads again to-morrow, fresher and more fragrant than ever.
"I am going in to see Mr Reynolds for a few minutes," Ralph said, as they walked home in the twilight. "Do you know when I can see your uncle?"
"On Monday morning, I should think—not too early. I want to tell you about Sir Douglas. He never was my guardian, and two years ago I had not even seen him; but his kindness to me since then has been beyond all words. Whatever he says—and I am afraid he will say a great deal—you must not quarrel with him. He won't in the end refuse me anything I have set my heart on. You see, he scarcely knows you at all, and that whole Borrowness episode is hateful to him beyond expression."
And indeed, when Ralph called at Gloucester Place on Monday, Sir Douglas forgot himself to an extent which is scarcely possible to a gentleman, unless he happen to be an Anglo-Indian.
Ralph stated his case well and clearly, but for a long time Sir Douglas could scarcely believe his ears. When at last doubt was no longer possible, he sat for some minutes in absolute silence, the muscles of his face twitching ominously.
"By Jove! sir, you have the coolness of Satan!" he burst forth at last, in a voice of concentrated passion; and every word that Ralph added to better his cause was torn to pieces and held up to derision with merciless cruelty.
The moment his visitor was out of the house, Sir Douglas put on his hat and went in search of Mona.
"It is not true, is it," he said, "that you want to marry that fellow?"
So Mona told the story of how the clever young doctor fell in love with the village shop-girl.
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, in fact," he sneered. "If that young whipper-snapper had had the impertinence to tell me that he thought you were really a shop-girl, I should have knocked him down on my own doorstep. Who is Dr Dudley? I never heard of him before."
"I am afraid I am no authority on pedigrees," Mona said, smiling. "But I have no doubt you could get the required information from Colonel Lawrence."
To the last Sir Douglas maintained that he could not imagine what Mona saw in the fellow; but he came by degrees to admit to himself that things might have been worse. If Mona was determined to practise medicine, as was certainly the case, it was as well that she should have a man to relieve her of those parts of the work in which her womanhood was not an essential factor; and it was a great matter to think that he could have his niece in London under his own eye.
Jack Melville's opinion was characteristic.
"Well played, Ralph!" he exclaimed. "It just shows that one never ought to despair of a man. When you went down to Borrowness after your Intermediate, I could have sworn that the siren was going to have an easy walk over."
"I am glad you both had sense enough to settle it so quickly," Lucy said phlegmatically, when Mona told her the news.
"Do you mean to say you suspected anything?"
"Suspected! I call that gratitude! The first time I saw Dr Dudley at St Kunigonde's, he said the surgery was as close as a Borrowness town-council room; and as soon as I mentioned him to you, I saw it all. I have been trying to bring you together ever since. Suspect, indeed! I can tell you, Mona, it was as well for my peace of mind that I did suspect."
"What a she-Lothario it is!"
"Don't be alarmed," said Lucy loftily. "When I was a child I thought as a child, but—I have outgrown all such frivolities. I—I am to be the advanced woman, after all! When you and Doris are lost in your nurseries, I shall be posing as a martyr, or leading a forlorn hope!”