"Good morning, Father Anton!" she called out gaily. "What a shame to have kept you waiting!"
The old priest turned toward her with unaffected pleasure, as he held out his hand.
"Good morning to you, mademoiselle"--he was smiling with eyes as well as lips. "What a radiant little girl! It makes one full of life and young again; you are, let me see, you are--a tonic!"
Henry Bliss removed his cigar to survey his daughter with whimsical reproach; then he patted her cheek affectionately.
"Fierce, wasn't it?" he chuckled. "Those beds are the worst ever! I was telling the curé here about them."
"It is too bad," said Father Anton solicitously. "It is regrettable. I am so very sorry. But"--earnestly--"you must not think too hardly of the Fregeaus. Since no guests sleep here, I am sure they can have no idea that--"
"No; of course not!" agreed Henry Bliss heartily, and laughed. "The hard feelings are all in the beds--and we'll let them stay there. Now, then, Myrna, are you ready to inspect this new domain of yours? And shall we walk, or take the car? Father Anton says it is not far."
It was the walk she had taken yesterday, at least it was the same as far as the little bridge; and for that distance she walked beside her father and the curé, chatting merrily, but there she loitered a little behind them. Half impishly, half with a genuine impulse that she rather welcomed than avoided, she told herself that it was quite unfair to pass the little spot so indifferently. Was it not here that this most bizarre of adventures had begun? She had stood here by the railing, and he had stood there across on the other side, and--the red leaped suddenly flaming into her cheeks. She had never looked at a man like that before--no man had ever looked at her like that before! And it had been spontaneous, instant, like a flash of fire that had lighted up a dark and unknown pathway, which, in the momentary blaze of light, was full of strange wonder; and which, because it was an unknown way, and because the glimpse had shown so much in so brief an instant that the brain fused all into confusion and nothing was concrete, resulted, not in illuminating the way, but, the flash of light gone again, in transforming the pathway only into a bewildering maze.