Presently Barbara wiped the tears from her eyes and threw out a life preserver to the unfortunate man.
“There, Count,” she called, “you can’t sink as long as you hold on to that. We’ll see if we can’t right your boat, and you can paddle back to shore.”
“I’m sorry we can’t offer you the hospitality of our boat,” said Miss Sallie, “but we are anchored, you see, and the engineer is ashore. Besides, I am afraid your wet clothing would spoil our decorations.”
The count, however, was too enraged to remember any English. He shook his fist at the upturned canoe and poured forth a perfect torrent of maledictions against it.
Just then a passing launch paused and gave the needed assistance, taking the count on board and towing the canoe to shore. As the little boat was righted an envelope that had evidently fallen from the count’s pocket, floated past them in the current.
“You dropped something,” called Barbara, but the launch had already started for shore and the count did not hear her. Using the crook of her parasol Ruth tried to fish it out. As she drew it to the side of the boat it sank out of sight but not before she had read the inscription on it, written in an angular foreign-looking handwriting: “To Madame La Comtesse Sophia von Stolberg.”
Barbara, too, saw it, and so did Mollie, whose face flushed crimson with the memory of what her beloved countess had said to her that night on the balcony of Thorne House. At that very moment, pinned inside of Mollie’s white silk blouse, was the dangerous paper which “concerned the count very intimately.”
Was it about that mysterious document that he was now writing to the countess?
For the first time Mollie felt the shadow of a doubt cross her mind. It was only a tiny speck of a doubt, but it left its impression, try as she would to shake it off.
Ruth and Barbara exchanged glances, but said nothing. They had seen enough to know that some sort of correspondence was being secretly carried on between the Countess von Stolberg and the Count de Sonde. If Maud were to marry the count she would deeply regret it, the Countess Sophia had said.