“You’re not bathing to-day, are you, Mrs. Hilyard?” put in Robin quickly, a look of swift anxiety on his face.
She shook her head, smiling.
“No. I’m afraid I’m too big a coward.”
“I should rather put it that you’ve got too much sense,” returned Robin. “It really isn’t safe for any but a very strong swimmer to-day.”
“Safe!” exclaimed Brett, angrily, snatching at the last word and flinging it, as it were, in Ann’s face. “Of course it isn’t safe!”
“Then what’s the meaning of that?” asked Ann pertinently, pointing to the bathing suit he carried on his arm.
“Oh, I’m going in. It would take more than this bit of sea to drown me”—carelessly.
He was making no idle boast. As Ann well know, he was almost as much at home in the water as he was on land. And presently, when it had been decided that only the three men should risk the roughness of the breakers, she stood watching him with quiet, unstinted admiration as, timing his plunge to a nicety, he met a large billow as it rose, dived sheer through its green depths, and emerged into the comparatively smooth water on the further side before its white, curving crest could thunder down on to the shore.
Robin and Tony made but a brief stay in the water—the former curtailing the proceedings because he very much preferred the idea of keeping Mrs. Hilyard company where she sat in a fold of the rocks. Meanwhile Ann’s gaze was riveted enviously on Forrester’s sleek red head as it appeared and disappeared with the rise and fall of the swelling sea. He looked as if he were thoroughly enjoying the buffeting he was getting.
“I should like to go in—just for a few minutes,” she said discontentedly. There are few things that draw the genuine sea-lover more strongly than the longing to plunge into the tantalising, gleaming water and feel the rush and prick of it and its buoyancy beneath one’s limbs.