*****
Fresh beauties, howsoe'er she moves, are stirr'd:
As the sunn'd bosom of a humming-bird
At each pant lifts some fiery hue,
Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue;
The same, yet ever new.
—Thomas Woolner.
I paced the breezy terrace at Glenarm, studying my problems, and stumbling into new perplexities at every turn. My judgment has usually served me poorly in my own affairs, which I have generally confided to Good Luck, that most amiable of goddesses; and I glanced out upon the lake with some notion, perhaps, of seeing her fairy sail drifting toward me. But there, to my vexation, hung the Stiletto, scarcely moving in the indolent air of noon. There was, I felt again, something sinister in the very whiteness of its pocket-handkerchief of canvas as it stole lazily before the wind. Did Miss Pat, in the school beyond the wall, see and understand, or was the yacht hanging there as a menace or stimulus to Helen Holbrook, to keep her alert in her father's behalf?
"There are ladies to see you, sir," announced the maid, and I found Helen and Sister Margaret waiting in the library.
The Sister, as though by prearrangement, went to the farther end of the room and took up a book.
"I wish to see you alone," said Helen, "and I didn't want Aunt Pat to know I came," and she glanced toward Sister Margaret, whose brown habit and nun's bonnet had merged into the shadows of a remote alcove.
The brim of Helen's white-plumed hat made a little dusk about her eyes. Pink and white became her; she put aside her parasol and folded her ungloved hands, and then, as she spoke, her head went almost imperceptibly to one side, and I found myself bending forward as I studied the differences between her and the girl on the Tippecanoe. Helen's lips were fuller and ruddier, her eyes darker, her lashes longer. But there was another difference, too subtle for my powers of analysis; something less obvious than the length of lash or the color of eyes; and I was not yet ready to give a name to it. Of one thing I was sure: my pulses quickened before her; and her glance thrilled through me as Rosalind's had not.
"Mr. Donovan, I have come to appeal to you to put an end to this miserable affair into which we have brought you. My own position has grown too difficult, too equivocal to be borne any longer. You saw from my father's conduct last night how hopeless it is to try to reason with him. He has brooded upon his troubles until he is half mad. And I learned from him what I had not dreamed of, that my Uncle Arthur is here—here, of all places. I suppose you know that."
"Yes; but it is a mere coincidence. It was a good hiding-place for him, as well as for us."
"It is very unfortunate for all of us that he should be here. I had hoped he would bury himself where he would never be heard of again!" she said, and anger burned for a moment in her face. "If he has any shame left, I should think he would leave here at once!"