“Rejuvenation while you wait,” Robin had murmured to Cara, under cover of the buzz of talk.
Mrs. Hilyard had laughed that low, pretty laugh of hers which was always free from the least suspicion of “cattiness.” “I defy any one to maintain a grown-up attitude when Brett decides that they shan’t,” she made answer.
Thanks to the arrangement of their respective seats at the table, Ann had been able to avoid holding any conversation with Eliot without provoking comment. She had dreaded meeting him again, feeling that it would be difficult to re-establish the merely friendly relations which had existed between them until one tense, glowing moment had swept aside convention and pretence and let each see deep into the other’s heart.
But the meeting passed off more easily than she had dared to hope. They exchanged brief greetings on the quay, where Brett Forrester’s guests had collected together and were waiting to board the yacht’s dinghy, and during the short passage across the bay to where the Sphinx lay anchored she and Cara and Miss Caroline had sat chatting together in the stern of the boat, leaving the three men to talk amongst themselves. And now, as the whole party emerged on to the deck for coffee, Ann found herself safely wedged in between Brett and the rector, with Coventry, much to her relief, established at the other end of the semicircle of chairs.
It was a glorious evening. The moon—“according to, orders,” as Brett had laughingly reminded her—hung like a great lambent globe in the sky, throwing a shimmering track of silver across the waters of the bay, and dappling the ripples of the sea beyond with shifting Jack-o’-Lantern gleams of light. The deck of the Sphinx shone with an almost dazzling whiteness, accentuated by the black patches of sharp shadow flung across it.
Ann sat quietly enjoying the peaceful beauty of it all, oblivious to the hum of conversation around her. For the time being she lost that sense of fear and dread of the yacht which had so curiously obsessed her yesterday. Now it seemed but a component part of the beautiful scene—to shoreward, a ragged string of cottage lights climbing the hill-side, speaking of hearth and home and of rest after the day’s labour, and beyond, the still, calm moon and tranquil bay, and the yacht, with its whiteness and sharp-cut shadows, lying motionless like some legendary vessel carved in alabaster.
“What’s your opinion, Ann?”
The question startled her, severing the dreaming thread of her thoughts. She roused herself with a smile.
“My opinion about what? I’m afraid I didn’t hear what was being said.”
“About pains and penalties,” explained Cara,