Why not cut in at once?
"She likes me--she has been a perfect dear to me these last few times of meeting! Philip backs me.

He would take my part.

Perhaps, after all, my fears are nonsense, and she would no more dream of marrying Philip, than he would dream, under cover of his guardianship, of making love to her." He raised himself in the boat, filled with a new inrush of will and hope, and took up the drifting oars.

Across the water, on the white slopes of lawn, and in some of the windows of the house, lights were appearing.

The electricians were testing the red and blue lamps they had been stringing among the rose-beds, and from the gabled boathouse on the further side, a bright shaft from a small searchlight which had been fixed there, was striking across the water.