"It is ourselves that must be going over the cliff," she declared. "I am sure Mamma is worrying about us already."
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT THE SMALL WOMAN IN BLACK SAW
With September the hurry at the Lodge subsided. Vacations were beginning to be over—mountain climbers and wood rangers were returning to office, studio and classroom. Those who remained were chiefly men and women bound to no regular occupations, caring more for the woods when the crowds of summer had departed and the red and gold of autumn were marching down the mountain side.
It had been a busy season at the Lodge, and Edith Morrison's face told the tale. The constant responsibility, and the effort to maintain the standard of entertainment, had left a worn look in her eyes and taken the color from her cheeks. The burden had lain chiefly on her young shoulders. Her father was invaluable as an entertainer and had a fund of information, but he was without practical resources, and the strain upon Edith had told. If for another reason a cloud had settled on her brow and a shadow had gathered in her heart, she had uttered no word, but had gone on, day by day, early and late, devising means and supervising methods—doing whatever was necessary to the management of a big household through all those busy weeks.
Little more than the others had she seen Robin during those last August days. He had been absent almost constantly. When he returned it was usually late, and such was the demand upon this most popular of Adirondack guides that in nearly every case he found a party waiting for early departure. If Edith suspected that there were times when he might have returned sooner, when she believed that he had paused at the camp on the west branch of the Au Sable, she still spoke no word and made no definite outward sign. Whatever she brooded in her heart was in that secret and silence which may have come down to her, with those black eyes and that glossy hair, from some old ancestor who silently in his wigwam pointed his arrows and cuddled his resentment to keep it warm. It had happened that during the days when Constance had been absent with her mother Robin had twice returned at an earlier hour, and this could hardly fail to strengthen any suspicion that might already exist of his fidelity, especially as the little woman in black had commented on the matter in Edith's presence, as well as upon the fact that immediately after the return of the absent ones he failed to reach the Lodge by daylight. It is a fact well established that once we begin to look for heartache we always find it—and, as well, some one to aid us in the search.
Not that Edith had made a confidante of the sinister-clad little woman. On the whole, she disliked her and was much more drawn toward the good-natured but garrulous old optimist, Miss Carroway, who saw with clear undistorted vision, and never failed to say a word—a great many words, in fact—that carried comfort because they constituted a plea for the creed of general happiness and the scheme of universal good. Had Edith sought a confidante merely for the sake of easing her heart, it is likely that it was to this good old spinster that she would have turned. But a nature such as hers does not confide its soul-hurt merely for the sake of consolation. In the beginning, when she had hinted something of it to Robin, he had laughed her fears away. Then, a little later, she had spoken to Frank Weatherby, for his sake as well as for her own. He had not laughed, but had listened and reflected, for the time at least; and his manner and his manhood, and that which she considered a bond of sympathy between them, made him the one to whom she must turn, now when the time had come to speak again.
There came a day when Robin did not go to the woods. In the morning he had been about the Lodge and the guides' cabin, of which he was now the sole occupant, greeting Edith in his old manner and suggesting a walk later in the day. But the girl pleaded a number of household duties, and presently Robin disappeared to return no more until late in the afternoon. When he did appear he seemed abstracted and grave, and went to the cabin to prepare for a trip next morning. Frank Weatherby, who had been putting in most of the day over some papers in his room, now returning from a run up the hillside to a point where he could watch the sunset, paused to look in, in passing.
"Miss Deane has been telling me the hermit's story," Robin said, as he saw who it was. "It seems to me one of the saddest stories I ever heard. My regret is that he did not tell it to me himself, years ago. Poor old fellow! As if I would have let it make any difference!"