"Oh, it's too bad you've been waiting," he answered.
"Of course I've been waiting!" she flung back, and he jumped up and ran toward her. Then down the steps flashed Helen Holbrook in white. She paused at the gate an instant before continuing her descent to the creek, bending her head as she sought the remaining steps. Her dark hair and clear profile trembled a moment in the summer dusk; then she ran past me and disappeared below.
"Daddy, you dear old fraud, I thought you were coming to meet me on the ridge!"
I turned and groped my way along the darkening path. My heart was thumping wildly and my forehead was wet with perspiration.
Ijima stood on the bank lighting his lantern, and I flung myself into the launch and bade him run for home.
We were soon crossing the lake. I lay back on the cushions and gazed up at the bright roof of stars. Before I reached Glenarm the shock of finding Helen Holbrook in friendly communication with her father had passed, and I sat down to dinner at nine o'clock with a sound appetite.
CHAPTER V
A FIGHT ON A HOUSE-BOAT
The best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.—Francis Bacon.