The moment had come for an understanding. With my two hands, unaided I had saved Phyllis, and now I must save—or lose—myself. Of course there was no choice which to do. I had played my fish and caught it, and as it was not the kind of fish I liked for dinner, I must tear it off the hook and throw it back into the sea, wriggling. I told myself that it was a bad, as well as an unattractive fish, that if I hadn't hooked it, most surely it would have bolted the beautiful little golden minnow I had been protecting. Still—still, there it was, smiling on the hook, that bad fish, trusting the hand which had caught and would betray it. It deserved nothing of that hand or any other hand; but suddenly, I found mine powerless.
"Phyllis, Phyllis," I groaned in spirit, "you will be my death, for to save you I caught this fish; now I may have to eat it, and it will surely choke me."
Before my eyes stretched a horrible vista of years, lived through with Freule Menela—mean little, vain, disloyal Freule Menela—by my side, contentedly spending my money and bearing my name, while I faded like a lovely lily on the altar of self-sacrifice.
In another instant I should have said yes, she had pleased me; she would have answered; and just because she is a woman I should have had to say something which she might have taken as she chose; so that it would have been all over for Ronald Lester Starr; but at this moment the two boats began to slow down. I suppose that Toon, at the steering-wheel of "Waterspin," must have received a message, which I was too preoccupied to hear; and as speed slackened, came the voice which others know as that of my Aunt Fay.
Never had it been so welcome, sounded so sweet, as now, when it brought my reprieve.
"Ronald dear," cooed the mock-Scottish accents, "you'd better get ready at once to lunch on shore, for Jonkheer Brederode has another surprise for us—and I know that by this time your hands, if not your face, are covered with paint."
Wonderful woman! It was as if inspiration had sent her to my rescue. Not that I am at all sure she would have laid herself out to rescue me from any snare, had she known of its existence; for though, before the watery world I am "Ronny dear" to her, she is not as considerate with me in private as she used to be when we first started.
We have been frank with each other at times, the L.C.P. and I, and the pot has said in plain words what it thinks of the kettle's true character. When the time comes for us to part it may be that her little ladyship will be still more frank, and let me know, in polite language, that seeing the last of her borrowed nephew is "good riddance of bad rubbish." Nevertheless, her extraordinary, though indescribable, cleverness has woven a kind of web about us all; and whether I am able to respect the L.C.P. or not, I was conscious of passionate gratitude to her as she arrested me with the bad fish half-way to my mouth.
The boats stopped at a private landing, small, but so remarkable that I thought for an instant the whole thing must be an optical illusion.
We had come to rest in the deep shadow of enormous trees. Leaning over the rail of a snug little harbor two dummy men in rakish hats and dark coats stared at the new arrivals with lack-luster eyes. And the dummies, and the wooden wall on which they were propped, with a strange painted motto consisting of snakes, and dogs, and sticks, and a yard measure, were all repeated with crystal-clear precision in the green mirror of quiet water.