"I could ask nothing better than this. Sister Margaret is most kind in every way. Helen and I have had a peaceful twenty-four hours—the first in two years—and I feel that at last we have found safe harborage."
"Best assured of it, Miss Holbrook! The summer colony is away off there and you need see nothing of it; it is quite out of sight and sound. You have seen Annandale—the sleepiest of American villages, with a curio shop and a candy and soda-fountain place and a picture post-card booth which the young ladies of St. Agatha's patronize extensively when they are here. The summer residents are just beginning to arrive on their shore, but they will not molest you. If they try to land over here we'll train our guns on them and blow them out of the water. As your neighbor beyond the iron gate of Glenarm I beg that you will look upon me as your man-at-arms. My sword, Madam, I lay at your feet."
"Sheathe it, Sir Laurance; nor draw it save in honorable cause," she returned on the instant, and then she was grave again.
"Sister Margaret is most kind in every way; she seems wholly discreet, and has assured me of her interest and sympathy," said Miss Patricia, as though she wished me to confirm her own impression.
"There's no manner of doubt of it. She is Sister Theresa's assistant. It is inconceivable that she could possibly interfere in your affairs. I believe you are perfectly safe here in every way, Miss Holbrook. If at the end of a week your brother has made no sign, we shall be reasonably certain that he has lost the trail."
"I believe that is true; and I thank you very much."
I had come prepared to be disillusioned, to find her charm gone, but her small figure had even an added distinction; her ways, her manner an added grace. I found myself resisting the temptation to call her quaint, as implying too much; yet I felt that in some olden time, on some noble estate in England, or, better, in some storied colonial mansion in Virginia, she must have had her home in years long gone, living on with no increase of age to this present. She was her own law, I judged, in the matter of fashion. I observed later a certain uniformity in the cut of her gowns, as though, at some period, she had found a type wholly comfortable and to her liking and thereafter had clung to it. She suggested peace and gentleness and a beautiful patience; and I strove to say amusing things, that I might enjoy her rare luminous smile and catch her eyes when she gave me her direct gaze in the quick, challenging way that marked her as a woman of position and experience, who had been more given to command than to obey.
"Did you think I was never coming, Aunt Pat? That shore-path calls for more strenuous effort than I imagined, and I had to change my gown again."
Helen Holbrook advanced quickly and stood by her aunt's chair, nodding to me smilingly, and while we exchanged the commonplaces of the day, she caught up Miss Pat's hand and held it a moment caressingly. The maid now brought the tea. Miss Pat poured it and the talk went forward cheerily.
The girl was in white, and at the end of a curved bench, with a variety of colored cushions about her and the bright sward and tranquil lake beyond, she made a picture wholly agreeable to my eyes. Her hair was dead black, and I saw for the first time that its smooth line on her brow was broken by one of those curious, rare little points called widow's peak. They are not common, nor, to be sure, are they important; yet it seemed somehow to add interest to her graceful pretty head.