Jane was standing now, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering.
"You mean, Lucy, that you would leave your child here and spend two months away from her?"
The wheels were crunching the gravel within a rod of the porch. Max had already lifted his hat.
"But, sister, you don't understand—" The drag stopped and Max, with uncovered head, sprang out and extended his hand to Jane.
Before he could offer his salutations Lucy's joyous tones rang out.
"Just in the nick of time, Max," she cried. "I've just been telling my dear sister that I'm going to move over to Beach Haven to-morrow, bag and baggage, and she is delighted at the news. Isn't it just like her?"
CHAPTER XVII
BREAKERS AHEAD
The summer-home of Max Feilding, Esq., of Walnut Hill, and of the beautiful and accomplished widow of the dead Frenchman was located on a levelled sand-dune in full view of the sea. Indeed, from beneath its low-hooded porticos and piazzas nothing else could be seen except, perhaps, the wide sky—gray, mottled, or intensely blue, as the weather permitted—the stretch of white sand shaded from dry to wet and edged with tufts of yellow grass; the circling gulls and the tall finger of Barnegat Light pointing skyward. Nothing, really, but some scattering buildings in silhouette against the glare of the blinding light—one the old House of Refuge, a mile away to the north, and nearer by, the new Life Saving Station (now complete) in charge of Captain Nat Holt and his crew of trusty surfmen.