Napier sprang to his feet just a second too late. Greta, in five fathoms of water, was crying for help.
The first Nan knew of what had happened, Madge was screaming with horror and Julian was tearing off his coat. But Napier was nearer. Miss Greta needn't have lifted her arms out of the water as the foolish do, calling frantically, "Mr. Napier! Mr. Nap—!" before, most horribly, she disappeared. Napier was out of the boat and swimming toward a hat. He dived and came up, supporting a dripping yellow head on one arm.
Julian helped to lift Miss Greta in. They covered her with coats. The two girls chafed her hands. Julian, silent with remorse, as fast as he could was bringing the Water Kelpie home.
As Napier supported Miss Greta down the little gangway, she pressed his arm. Under her breath, "You've saved my life," she murmured. "For all that's left of it, I shall remember."
She wouldn't wait till they could get a motor. In her clinging, soaking clothes she insisted on walking those three quarters of a mile from the landing to Kirklamont.
Oh, Greta von Schwarzenberg was game, for all her pardonable panic at the sudden prospect of death. Napier admitted as much to Miss Ellis, as the heroine of the day hurried on before them, nobly concerned to tone down the story with which Madge and Bobby were so pleasantly occupied in freezing their mother's blood.
Nan lingered a moment at Julian's side in the lobby, but it was to Napier she was talking. "'Peril of death'?" she repeated, under cover of the repercussions of Lady McIntyre's consternation and thankfulness. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, I don't want to make much of the little I did—but suppose I hadn't been there, and suppose Julian couldn't swim!"
"But Greta can."
Both men stared at the girl incredulously.