"Yes, and I have to thank you for making us known to each other. It might not have happened if we had not gone to Jagged Island that day, for I am candid enough to admit that you occupied first place up to then. However our being in common danger, as it were, put us on a different footing. Ever since then I have noticed a difference in his manner toward me. It was Jagged Island that settled it, I am sure. Do give me the satisfaction of hearing that you really do not mind, Gwen. Now that I have actually won the race I feel a little guilty."
"My dear, you needn't in the very least. I am perfectly delighted. It isn't every day that one's friends marry millionaires. I congratulate you with all my heart, and have not the smallest pang."
"It only happened yesterday," Ethel went on, "but I had to tell you before I left. It will be announced when we get home. Aunt Harriet is so pleased."
Gwen's smile might be called a veritable grin. "Of course she is. Very few aunts would not be."
"Would yours?"
"I am not sure. She is so darlingly unworldly that she might ask all sorts of probing questions that one couldn't answer to her satisfaction. Shall you be married soon, Ethel?"
"In the spring, I think. Who could ever dream that in this little unfashionable isolated place I should meet a man like Cephas? As Aunt Harriet says, I might have gone up and down the coast for years and never have found his like. I was so disgusted, too, when we first arrived at what seemed to me a perfectly impossible place. It has been the loveliest summer I ever spent, and it is all due to you, Gwen." In her great content Ethel was at her best.
"I am so very, very glad," murmured Gwen.
"I do wish the Hardy girls were still here, and Flossy Fay." Ethel would have enjoyed the triumph of announcing her engagement to them.
"All the other butterflies have flown," said Gwen. "We are the only ones left."