“Go, uncle?” said Louise eagerly, and then checking herself.
Duncan Leslie’s heart sank like an ingot of his own copper dropped in a tub.
“Yes, go.”
“If you think so, uncle—”
“Well, I do,” he said testily, “only pray go at once.”
“There!” cried Harry. “Come, Maddy.”
He held out his hand to his sister’s companion, but she hesitated, still looking at Louise, whose colour was going and coming as she saw Pradelle take off his cap and follow his friend’s example, holding out his hand to help her into the boat.
“Yes, dear,” she said to Madelaine gravely. “They would be terribly disappointed if we did not go.”
The next moment Madelaine was in the boat, Louise still hanging back till, feeling that it would be a slight worse than the refusal to go if she ignored the help extended to her, she laid her hand in Pradelle’s and stepped off the rock into the gently rising and falling boat.
“Another of my mistakes,” said Duncan Leslie to himself; and then he started as if some one had given him an electric shock.