“You seem rather distraught,” she said with an arch smile, her dark eyes fixed on his face. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“Oh yes,” he replied absently.
“You were gone for some time this morning,” she stated.
“Yes,” he concurred, “I went up to bring Connie.”
“Oh!”
Janet’s fine eyebrows lifted slightly, and she looked at Donald with a curious intentness. “Why didn’t she come?”
“She wasn’t home.”
Her woman’s intuition long ago had told her that the “wood-sprite”—as Donald called Connie—was madly in love with him. As she looked at him now and noticed his pre-occupied air, a pang of jealousy shot through her heart like an arrow. Was it possible that he had begun to realise that the wild girl of the woods was not a child, and that a love for her had been kindled in his heart? The thought made her feel faint and she tried to put it from her mind.
Lunch was finished now and they were walking back to the lake. Douglas invited the party to take a trip around the lake in a motor-boat, to which they assented gleefully.
Janet hesitated as Donald turned away with Wainwright. “Aren’t you coming, Mr. McLean?” she called.