“And to think we never knew or even guessed,” Terry added. “He must be in love with you,” she finished softly.
“Don’t be silly, Terry,” Arden scolded, her face crimson with blushes. “He just happened to use my face. It doesn’t look much like me, anyway. I’m not that pretty.”
“It looks exactly like you,” Sim insisted. “There’s no use being falsely modest about such things. You know you’re pretty.”
“Oh, stop!” Arden begged, and her friends saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “He’s gone now, and whatever happened to him, I’m afraid to guess. But I know one thing. He never would have gone away without leaving some word unless he was taken against his will.”
“What shall we do?” Sim asked, coming as usual straight to the heart of the matter and for the moment disregarding the portrait.
“I don’t know,” Arden replied helplessly. For a time the girls listened while the storm howled outside and the waves slapped harder against the fat sides of the Merry Jane.
“We can’t stay here very much longer,” Terry reminded them. “The tide is coming in, and there won’t be any place left to walk on back home.”
Arden nodded grimly; then, without a word of explanation, she went out the door and back to the stern of the houseboat. She returned as quickly as she had gone.
“I just wanted to see,” she explained, “if Dimitri’s rowboat was still tied up. It is, and his old car is there, too.”
“Then, of course, wherever he went or was taken, he didn’t go in his own boat or car,” Terry reasoned.