Yet, viewed from the porch, it was not so bad. The flower beds gave enough colour, and the near-by trees were mostly white birch, with their graceful shapes and pale, lovely trunks.
Yet between us and the lake was a solid wall of dark, dense woodland that shut off all view of the outer world and shut in the Island and its buildings and people.
“I can’t see why Alma likes this place,” I said, in a low voice. “She doesn’t seem at all morbid or despondent herself.”
“Do you know her?” Keeley asked me, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t know her at all! But, I promised myself, that was a defect that time should remedy and that, I hoped, soon.
From where I sat, I could see into the house through a window. I looked into the same room we had been in the other day I had called here, the day when Merry had told us if we were men to let the poor girl alone.
As I looked, not curiously, only idly, I saw the old man, Merivale, come into the room and adjust a record and then turn on a victrola.
The strains of Raff’s Cavatina floated out to us, and Kee gave a little smile of enjoyment.
A moment later, Merivale appeared with glasses on a tray, and I said, pleasantly, “Your music sounds fine, out here on the lake.”
He looked up suddenly, saw the open window and frowned.
“That Katy!” he exclaimed. “She’s forever turnin’ on that machine! Do you mind it, sir?” He looked anxiously at Kee.