The water was barely up to her knees, but she stumbled among slippery stones as she fled round the corner of the boat-house, and twice she nearly fell.

There were reeds growing by the bank; she struggled through them, frantically fighting her way.
She was drenched nearly to the waist when at last she climbed up the grassy slope.

She heard the seekers laughing down among the ruins some distance away as she did so, and for a few seconds she thought she might escape to the house unobserved.

She turned in that direction, her wet skirts clinging round her.

And then, simultaneously, two things happened.
The key ground in the lock of the boat-house, and, ere Wentworth could emerge, a man walked out from the shadow of some trees and met her on the path.