Riever's instinct warned him against making any loverly demonstration at such a moment. "Good-by," he said.
Pen's generous, open nature imperiously demanded that she avow her true feelings, and crush him like the worm he was. It cost her a frightful, silent struggle to keep it in. She kept saying to herself mechanically: "We haven't convicted him yet. I must go on deceiving him!"
Without raising her eyes, she offered him her hand. He carried it lightly to his lips, and quickly left the room.
But how he got out, or what she herself did during the next half hour, Pen could never have told clearly. When she came back to the realization of things it was to find herself kneeling at one of the windows in her room listening to the clank of the yacht's anchor chain. The sound seemed to be striking on her bare heart. She saw the mud-hook slowly rise out of the water, and the yacht's screws set up a churning astern. The graceful vessel began to move. She came about in a wide circle and swept out of Pen's range of vision behind the trees. As she passed the lighthouse she saluted with three blasts of her melodious whistle, and the lighthouse bell tolled in answer.
Somewhere in the bowels of that vessel, in darkness perhaps, and manacled, sat the bright-haired Don, grinning derisively at misfortune. He was depending on her; keeping himself up no doubt with the assurance that she had secured the money to save him ... Pen's head dropped on her arms.
Upon the departure of the yacht, the crowd at Broome's Point quickly broke up. Slow-moving ox-carts started up the Neck road, and noisy motor-boats put off up the river and across the Bay. Before it was midday the old unbroken peace had descended on the remote estate, and all that had happened in between seemed like a dream. As of old, the fish-hawks plunged for their wriggling prey, buzzards circled high in the blue, hens clucked contentedly at the kitchen door, and the turkeys set up a sudden gobbling in the fields.
Pen could not long give herself up to despair. She must act if she wished to save her sanity. With a tormented face she went about the house in a whirl of activity. Black Aunt Maria's eyes rolled askance at her mistress. Pendleton remained down on the beach seeing the boats off. Pen suspected he was purposely keeping out of her way.
When he came in to dinner he was affecting an air of busy abstraction. When Pen addressed him he would reply, gently:
"Don't interrupt me, my dear, I have an idea just taking shape in my mind."
This was an old dodge of his, when he wished to escape something unpleasant. Pen smiled to herself without mirth, and quietly bided her time.