"Miss Jenny Ann," she murmured, "the girls will tell you what happened to-night. I can't talk of it now. May I lie down on the couch in the living room? Will every one please leave me alone?"
The three other girls and Miss Jenny Ann sat for a while on the deck of their pretty boat. Eleanor kept her head buried in her chaperon's lap. She cried a little, partly from sympathy with Madge and partly from amazement and horror at the story she had just heard.
Very quietly Lillian told what had happened.
"Madge is right," Miss Jenny Ann concluded at the end of Lillian's recital. "We must not talk to her of this insult to her father. It is enough to let her know we do not believe it."
The little party did not linger out on deck after the story had been told. It was midnight and chilly. The wind was blowing over the water, lashing the waves to a white foam. As Miss Jenny Ann retired to her cabin the thought came to her that they had lingered too long aboard their houseboat. It was getting late in September. Any day they might be overtaken by an equinoctial storm. She wished that they had brought more coal and fresh water aboard the houseboat, and that the provisions in the larder had not run so low. She wondered if the boy who attended to their marketing, and carried things to and from the shore, would come down to them in a heavy rain.
Miss Jenny Ann did not attempt to go to sleep. She put on her dressing gown and lay down in her berth to think over their situation and decide what had best be done.
The other girls were soon asleep. But in a little while Miss Jones heard a faint sound. It came from their sitting room. Some one called her name. It was Madge.
Miss Jenny Ann went softly in, to find Madge still lying on the sofa, a little leather book clasped in her hands.
"I wish to tell you a story, Miss Jenny Ann," began Madge solemnly. "I have never told it to any one else, but I have come to the place where I feel that I ought to talk things over with some one I can trust. I know of no one else, not even Phil, to whom I would rather tell it. Would you like to hear it?"
"My dear, my dear," said Miss Jenny Ann tremulously, "I know of no one else whose confidence I should so prize as yours. But are you sure that you wish to tell me?"