"We could almost walk to the lake over the trees," said Miss Pat. "It's a charming picture."
Then, as we all turned to the lake, seeing it afar across the tree-tops through the fragrant twilight, I saw the _Stiletto_ standing out boldly upon the waters of Annandale, with a languid impudence that I began to associate with its slim outlines and snowy canvas. Other craft were abroad, and Miss Pat, I judged, spoke only of the prettiness of the general landscape, and there was, to be sure, no reason why the sails of the _Stiletto_ should have had any particular significance for her. Helen was still looking down upon the lake when Miss Pat suggested that we should go home; and even after her aunt called to her, the girl still stood, one hand resting upon the trunk of a great beech, her gaze bent wistfully, mournfully toward the lake. But on the homeward drive--she had asked for the reins again--her mood changed abruptly, and she talked cheerily, often turning her head--a scarlet-banded sailor hat was, I thought, remarkably becoming--to chaff about her skill with the reins.
"I haven't a care or trouble in the world," declared Miss Pat when I left them at St. Agatha's. "I am sure that we have known the worst that can happen to us in Annandale. I refuse to be a bit frightened after that drive."
"It was charming," said Helen. "This is better than the English lake country, because it isn't so smoothed out."
"I will grant you all of that," I said. "I will go further and admit--what is much for me--that it is almost equal to Killarney."
There seemed to be sincerity in their good spirits, and I was myself refreshed and relieved as I drove into Glenarm; but I arranged for the same guard as on the night before. Helen Holbrook's double-dealing created a condition of affairs that demanded cautious handling, and I had no intention of being caught napping.
I am not, let me say, a person who boasts of his knowledge of human nature. Good luck has served to minimize my own lack of subtlety in dealing with my fellow-creatures; and I take no credit for such fortune as I have enjoyed in contests of any sort with men or women. As for the latter, I admire, I reverence, I love them; but I can not engage to follow them when they leave the main road for short cuts and by-paths. The day had gone so well that I viewed the night with complacency. I read my foreign newspapers with a recurrence of the joy that the thought of remote places always kindles in me. An article in _The Times_ on the unrest in Bulgaria--the same old article on the same old unrest--gave me the usual heartache: I have been waiting ten years for something to happen in that neighborhood--something really significant and offering a chance for fun, and it seems as far away as ever.