“Across the river—” she began, and let the words die away on her lips as she realized what this meant.
“But you’re wet through—wet through!” she cried. “Here! You must wear something of mine.”
With trembling fingers she loosened her own dress, hurriedly slipped out of her skirt, flung it aside and began to fumble at Nance’s garments. With little cries of horror as she found how completely drenched her sister was, she pulled her into the deeper shadow of the trees and forced her to take off everything.
“How beautiful you look, my dear,” she cried, searching as a child might have done for any excuse to delay the impending judgment. Nance, even in the reaction from her anxiety, could not be quite indifferent to the naïveté of this appeal and she found herself actually laughing presently as with her arms stretched high above her head and her fingers clinging to a resinous pine branch, she let her sister chafe her body back to warmth.
“Look! I’ll finish you off with ferns!” cried the younger girl, and plucking a handful of new-grown bracken she began rubbing her vigorously with its sweet-scented fronds.
“Oh, you do look lovely!” she cried once more, surveying her from head to foot. “Do let me take down your hair! You’d look like—oh, I don’t know what!”
“I wish Adrian could see you,” she added. This last remark was a most unlucky blunder on Linda’s part. It had two unfortunate effects. It brought back to Nance’s mind her own deep-rooted trouble and it restored all her recent dread as to her sister’s destiny.
“Give me something to put on,” she said sharply. “We must be getting away from here.”
Linda promptly stripped herself of yet more garments and after a friendly contest as to which of them should wear the dry skirt they were ready to emerge from their hiding-place. Nance fancied that all her difficulties for that day were over. She was never more mistaken.
They had advanced about half a mile towards the park, keeping tacitly within the shadow of the pines when suddenly Linda, who was carrying her sister’s wet clothes, dropped the bundle with a quick cry and stood, stone-still, gazing across the fields. Nance looked in the direction of her gaze and understood in a moment what was the matter. There, walking hastily towards the spot they had recently quitted—was the figure of a man.