"I came to see you, primarily. First, to assure myself that you had really quite recovered from drowning—I have asked of you down at the store—and second, to discuss a mighty secret with you."
"You have really—asked about me?" she returned with lifted eyebrows. "You knew when you left that day I would recover, thanks to your skill. Was not that enough?"
I felt annoyed. It appeared as if she was trying to make me confess a deeper interest than I truly owned.
"A common sense of decency would have impelled me to assure myself you were suffering no bad after effects," I replied.
"Oh, that was it?" she responded, I thought a bit coolly. Then—"You mentioned a secret. How on earth could a secret exist in this lonesome-ridden place? But of course I'm all curiosity now to hear it. Let's go to the summerhouse. Uncle rises late, and is now in the midst of his breakfast."
She moved toward a conical shaped piece of greenery, and I put myself at her side. It proved to be some trellis work built in the form of a square, with a peaked top, the whole completely covered by some luxuriant vine. Even the doorway was so thickly hung that we had to draw the festoons aside to enter. Within the light was tempered to a gray-green tone. A hammock was swung across the center of the place, and on all sides except the entrance one were placed benches. Miss Drane set her basket down and promptly dropped into the hammock, where she twisted about into a comfortable attitude. She apparently took no notice of the fact that her dress had become drawn up six or eight inches above her shapely ankles, but quietly loosened the strings under her chin and cast the bonnet on the floor, then threw her arms above her head, laced her fingers, and turned to me with a smile which was half humorous and half pathetic.
"Now I'm fixed. Settle yourself the best you can, and let's hear the mystery."
"May I smoke?" I asked, dodging under one of the ropes, and coming around so that I might sit facing her.
"Certainly."
"A pipe?"