“In a minute, uncle. But Adrian has asked me something and it is the strangest thing that I cannot answer him. Where is my father buried?”
If she had dealt him a mortal blow he could not have turned more white. With a groan that pierced her very heart, he stared at Margot with wide, unseeing eyes; then sprang to his feet and fixed upon poor Adrian a look that scorched.
“You! You?” he gasped, and sinking back covered his face with his hands.
CHAPTER IX
PERPLEXITIES
What had he done?
Ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results, that piercing look made Adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he hastened to leave the room and the cabin. Hurrying to the beach he appropriated Margot’s little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the lake. From her and Pierre he had learned to handle the light craft with considerable skill and he now worked off his excitement by swift paddling, so that there was soon a wide distance between him and the island.
Then he paused and looked around him, upon as fair a scene as could be found in any land. Unbroken forests bounded this hidden Lake Profundis, out of whose placid waters rose that mountain-crowned, verdure-clad Island of Peace, with its picturesque home, and its cultured owner, who had brought into this best of the wilderness the best of civilization.