Pen was obliged to let it go at that, though it was with a sickening anxiety.
Riever's voice thickened again. "You've quieted down now," he murmured. "You're not going to let me go like this..."
Pen's hands went up again, but he caught her roughly to him. He could not reach her face. He pressed a burning kiss on her neck. Pen tore herself away, and ran shudderingly to her room.
Next morning Pen was late, for her, in getting down-stairs, and her father was before her. He had already been out-of-doors and had heard the startling news. He was pale with excitement, and his expression presented a comical mixture of elation and outraged parental authority.
"What is this?" he cried. "Counsell is caught? And caught by you!"
"That pleases you, doesn't it?" said Pen, in a quiet way very aggravating to an excited man.
"Pleases me?" he cried. "My daughter starting out at night on such an errand! Wandering around the woods with a gun! Pleases me!" He ended on a more human note. "You might have told me when you came in, instead of letting me learn it from strangers!"
"I was all in," said Pen simply. "I couldn't face the added excitement even of telling you."
"Um! Humph! Ha!" he snorted. "What will become of your reputation?"
"Mr. Riever didn't seemed to think it had suffered," Pen murmured slyly.
"Ha! ... Well, of course he wouldn't say so! ... I sha'n't be able to sleep quietly for thinking what _might_ have happened!"
Pen saw that the indignant parent only wanted to put himself on record, and that underneath the man was delighted. She went ahead and gave him his breakfast. He ate it in a charming humor.
Afterwards she went about her household chores waiting for Riever, sick with anxiety. Suppose he didn't come? Suppose even then, the yacht was getting ready to sail? She couldn't go out to see. She simply could not humiliate her pride to the extent of going down to the wharf to look for her money.
After all Riever did come, and early, too. It still lacked a few minutes of nine. But he met Pendleton outside, who brought him in, and the two men were closeted in the front drawing-room for awhile. Pen felt by instinct that this interview boded her no good. Afterwards her father came to her in the kitchen saying: