“I have to ask you to change to the large boat going back,” he said, a little stiffly perhaps; “Mr. Jonas is taking Mrs. Garnier in the small one, and Mr. Henderson says he will see to you.”
When she answered her voice was lightly nonchalant.
“Why not?” she said, absorbed in putting on her jacket.
She took her place in the boat by Mr. Henderson. Evidently the evening had gone wrong with him, for his face was ghastly in the moonlight, and his long, nervous fingers never stopped fingering the little gold cross hanging below the line of his vest.
William Leroy did not return with the party at all. Not that she was concerned with that, Alexina assured herself proudly, it was only that she could not help hearing the others wondering at his entering a boat with the negro boy and rowing swiftly away up the lake. It was clear to her. Lake Nancy would have been the next lake on the chain had the channel been cut. He meant to tramp across home to save himself the trouble of going back to town. She did not think he had very good manners at any rate. Yet, when the boats came in at the hotel pier, it was William Leroy who met them. He waited for Alexina and walked with her a little ahead of the others up through the yard.
“Mrs. Garnier is not well,” he told her. “I went home and drove in and Mr. Jonas is putting her in the wagon now. We’ll take her out to mother; she’s all upset over something.”
She stopped short, having forgotten her mother. “I can’t let you,” she declared; “it isn’t right to Mrs. Leroy.”
“Mother’s waiting,” he said. “You’d better go in and say something to somebody, and get Celeste.”
Mrs. Leroy said that people always obeyed the King William tone. Alexina stood, hesitating. He waited.
Then she went.