I left Miss Pat and crossed the room to the balcony. As I approached one of the doors I saw Helen, standing tiptoe for greater height, slowly raise and lower her handkerchief thrice, as though signaling to some one on the water.
I laughed outright as I stepped beside her.
"It's better to be a picture than to look at one, Miss Holbrook! Allow me!"
In her confusion she had dropped her handkerchief, and when I returned it she slipped it into her cuff with a murmur of thanks. A flash of anger lighted her eyes and she colored slightly; but she was composed in an instant. And, looking off beyond the water-tower, I was not surprised to see the Stiletto quite near our shore, her white sails filling lazily in the scant wind. A tiny flag flashed recognition and answer of the girl's signal, and was hauled down at once.
We were both silent as we watched it; then I turned to the girl, who bent her head a moment, tucking the handkerchief a trifle more securely into her sleeve. She smiled quizzically, with a compression of the lips.
"The view here is fine, isn't it?"
We regarded each other with entire good humor. I heard Miss Pat within, slowly crossing the bare floor of the gallery.
"You are incomparable!" I exclaimed. "Verily, a daughter of Janus has come among us!"
"The best pictures are outdoors, after all," commented Miss Pat; and after a further ramble about the house they returned to St. Agatha's, whence we were to drive together to Annandale in half an hour.
I went to the stone water-tower and scanned the movements of the Stiletto with a glass while I waited. The sloop was tacking slowly away toward Annandale, her skipper managing his sheet with an expert hand. It may have been the ugly business in which the pretty toy was engaged, or it may have been the lazy deliberation of her oblique progress over the water, but I felt then and afterward that there was something sinister in every line of the Stiletto. The more I deliberated the less certain I became of anything that pertained to the Holbrooks; and I tested my memory by repeating the alphabet and counting ten, to make sure that my wits were still equal to such exercises.