The cottage row was now well astern; the long string of empty bathhouses slid by, water foamed under the swelling sail. Gliding with the bark, dreamy retrospect met and joined hands with solider prospect. Carlisle threw round a measuring eye, and perceived that she had covered more distance than she had thought; had passed the limits of the board-walk and the beach, which was quite far enough, considering. She luffed cleverly, having a splendid blowy time of it, and put about. This done, she permitted herself to glance for the second time over the purview.
No cloud of smoke stood upon the horizon stationward, no human being appeared within such view of the strand as the cottages and bath-houses left to her. The train, evidently, was late. Well, as far as that went, there was no special hurry about getting back to the hotel. Mamma could only scold a little, as usual.
Carlisle smiled to herself, rather tickled by the thought of the brilliant march she and mamma had stolen upon the world. In five minutes, under stiff Mr. Payne's eye at that, she had indubitably interested Mr. Canning. And now, thanks chiefly to Willie Kerr's loyal enterprise, ...
Her returning eye fell upon a bobbing object in the water, very near her, and her heart missed a beat. Her lips moved soundlessly. Jack Dalhousie!...
The bobbing object, in fact, was the head of a man of the sea; a youthful swimmer who had come up on her unseen--behind her till she had put about. The lad was swimming rapidly, though with a curious waste of motive power, and was so close that Miss Heth seemed to herself to be staring full into his face. His course was laid dead across her bows; for other reasons, too, his piratical intentions were instantly obvious to the girl in the boat.
How did he dare!--after all these months ...
For an exciting second she plotted escape by flight, but the impulse was all but still-born. He would be on her before she could put about. The girl sat entirely still, regarding the swimmer in a kind of fascinated silence. The irony of fate, indeed, that, at a moment when her whole mind and heart were toward the rose-pink future, this scapegrace ghost from her only "past" should have risen out of the sea upon her. To dream of a Canning, and be entrapped by a Dalhousie!...
The youth sloshed alongside, laid hold of the boat's nose, and methodically and with some difficulty pulled himself in. The weight of his ingress tipped the gunwale to the water's edge, but Carlisle made no outcry. She was clear of head; and the heart of her desire was to be free of this misadventure without attracting attention from the shore.
She said in a sharp, clear voice: "Mr. Dalhousie, are you perfectly crazy?"
Dalhousie, in his swimmer's suit, sat stiffly forward, sluicing water into the bottom. He was a big and well-built boy, with a face that had no viciousness; but his dark eyes, with their heavy silken lashes, were hardly meant for a man. Neither was his mouth, for all that he sought to set it so firmly now.