"Why don't you find out?" Napier said. His own impatience, his sense of suppressed irritation at the idea of the Schwarzenberg's uncanny hold, surprised Napier--though he would have said it was a natural expression of sympathy for his friend. "_I'd_ find out 'what she counts for' ... if it were my affair!"
"I was going to yesterday," Julian said. "I'm thinking I will to-night."
Napier took out his watch. "Ten minutes to eleven," he remarked.
"Hang the Schwarzenberg!" Her inventing to see Nan home in the motor that evening had been a low-down device to cheat Julian Grant of his rights!
But all the same here he was, briskly leading the way along the cross-cut to the inn. "She's often late getting to bed."
"Going over the hill, I've seen the light in her window.... Do you notice," he broke off to say, "how, when we're sailing, Nan always wants to go farther out?" He waited a moment, eager for Napier's tribute to the spirit of the girl. "And not foolhardy either!"
"You are making a very tolerable sailor of her," Napier admitted.
"Steady as any old hand," the other went on eagerly. "And that woman always interfering. 'Be careful, Nanchen; leave it to Mr. Grant.' 'We must turn back now; look how far we've come!'"
There had been, indeed that very afternoon, a spirited argument, in the course of which a number of prickly observations were made, chiefly by Bobby and Miss Greta. With sole exception of the lady, everybody in the boat enthusiastically--Bobby even violently--in favor of going out to the Islands. The project was opposed by the one person with a pertinacity that Julian was sure could mean only one thing. A jealous woman's determination to preserve her ascendancy. To make a test case. She's afraid she's losing hold. She must make a stand somewhere. She makes it at Gull Island. "We aren't to land there if von Schwarzenberg dies for it. I tell you what it is, Gavan. I'll get Nan out to Gull Island to-morrow, or I'll know the reason why!" The face Julian turned to his friend in the starlight was lit with radiances Napier had never thought to see there.
"This way." Julian began to tread his way on in front, among the rocks and underbrush. "I shall go and wait in the gorse by the inn till von Schwarzenberg takes herself off."