But neither of them had alluded to it again.
As for Lionel Varick and Bubbles Dunster, they were now lagging some way behind the others.

More than once the girl suggested that she should slip away and go back to Wyndfell Hall alone, but her host would not hear of it.

He declared good-humouredly that soon they would all be homeward bound; so, apathetically, Bubbles walked on, her feet and her head aching.
The old Roman embankment now formed part of the works connected with a big reservoir, and at last the walkers reached a kind of platform from whence they could see, stretching out to their right, a wide, triangular-shaped piece of water.
Blanche Farrow was for turning back; but Helen Brabazon, Sir Lyon, and Varick were all for going on, the more so that Varick declared that at a cottage which formed the apex of the reservoir they would be able to get some tea.

So off they started again, in the same order as before, to find, however, that the narrow brick-way, instead of being drier--as one would have expected it to be above the water--was more slushy and slippery than had been the path running along the top of the older part of the embankment.

Yet the steep bank leading down to the sullen, half-frozen surface of the reservoir had been cleared of the grass and bushes which covered the slopes of the rest of the causeway.
They had all been walking on again for some minutes when Donnington turned round.