CHAPTER XVI
What Happened to Zizi
“Just like a kitten!” Zizi sputtered; “just like a little, day-old kitten! Ugh! I’m as mad as a wet hen!”
She was sitting on the bank of the lake, dripping wet, daubed with mud, her black eyes snapping with anger.
When she had been thrown into the pool, the big, entangling cape had caught in the sedge grass that bordered the water, and clutching this, the girl had hung on till she could manage to slip her slim little feet from the rope that bound them. A stiff rope and clumsily tied, it had been possible to free herself, though she might not have been able to do it, but for her experiences as a moving picture actress. It was not the first time she had been flung into water, for her slim agility had proved useful in film thrillers, and acrobatic feats were her long suit.
Able, too, to remain under water for a few moments without breathing, she had freed herself from the rope, and scrambled up the bank almost as rapidly as she had been sent to her intended doom.
She had pulled the cloth from her mouth, and sat, breathing in good air, but too exhausted to rise.
“If he’d only spoken, drat him!” she muttered, “and yet it must have been that wretch! I know it was, but how can I prove it? Oh, I wish it wasn’t so dark! And I’m so wet!”
She got up now, and tried to wring the water from the cloak that she still clutched round her. Beside that she had on her nightdress, and a thin silk kimono, both of which were wetly clinging to her slim little body.
Throwing the still soaking wet cloak about her, and shivering as it sopped against her, she went toward the house.
It stood, still and sombre, a black thing amid blacker shadows. The aspen branches soughed eerily, but no other sound broke the silence. The great doors were closed, the windows all shut, and no sign of life was visible.