"I hope you have had no misgivings, Miss Pat, since our talk yesterday."
"None whatever," she replied quickly. "I am quite persuaded in my own mind that I should have been better off if I had made a stand long ago. I don't believe cowardice ever pays, do you?"
She smiled up at me in her quick, bright way, and I was more than ever her slave.
"Miss Holbrook, you are the bravest woman in the world! I believe you are right. I think I should be equal to ten thousand men with your spirit to put heart into me."
"Don't be foolish," she said, laughing. "But to show you that I am not really afraid, suppose you offer to take us for a drive this evening. I think it would be well for me to appear to-day, just to show the enemy that we are not driven to cover by our little adventure in the launch yesterday."
"Certainly! Shall we carry outriders and a rear guard?"
"Not a bit of it. I think we may be able to shame my brother out of his evil intentions by our defenselessness."
We waited for Helen to rejoin us, and the drive was planned for five. Promptly on the hour, after a day of activity on my part in cruising the lake, looking for signs of the enemy, we set forth in an open trap, and plunged into country roads that traversed territory new to all of us. I carried Ijima along, and when, after a few miles, Helen asked to take the reins, I changed seats with her, and gave myself up to talk with Miss Pat. The girl's mood was grave, and she wished to drive, I fancied, as an excuse for silence. The land rolled gradually away into the south and west, and we halted, in an hour or so, far from the lake, on a wooded eminence that commanded a long sweep in every direction, and drew into the roadside. Ijima opened a gate that admitted us to a superb maple grove, and in a few minutes we were having tea from the hamper in the cheeriest mood in the world. The sun was contriving new marvels in the west, and the wood that dipped lakeward beneath us gave an illusion of thick tapestry to the eye.
"We could almost walk to the lake over the trees," said Miss Pat. "It's a charming picture."
Then, as we all turned to the lake, seeing it afar across the tree-tops through the fragrant twilight, I saw the Stiletto standing out boldly upon the waters of Annandale, with a languid impudence that I began to associate with its slim outlines and snowy canvas. Other craft were abroad, and Miss Pat, I judged, spoke only of the prettiness of the general landscape, and there was, to be sure, no reason why the sails of the Stiletto should have had any particular significance for her. Helen was still looking down upon the lake when Miss Pat suggested that we should go home; and even after her aunt called to her, the girl still stood, one hand resting upon the trunk of a great beech, her gaze bent wistfully, mournfully toward the lake. But on the homeward drive—she had asked for the reins again—her mood changed abruptly, and she talked cheerily, often turning her head—a scarlet-banded sailor hat was, I thought, remarkably becoming—to chaff about her skill with the reins.