Strange, as she hastened on, how Jesse Devereaux's eyes and smile haunted her thoughts with little thrills of pleasure; how she wondered if she should ever see him again.
"Perhaps Dolly Dorr will make him fall in love with her, she is so pretty, with her fluffy yellow hair and big torquoise-blue eyes," she thought, with a curious sensation of deadly pain, jealous already, though she guessed it not.
The night was still and calm, and suddenly the dip of oars in the water came to her ears. She looked, and saw a little boat headed for the beach, with a single occupant.
The keel grated on the shore, the man sprang out, and came directly toward her, pausing with hat in hand—a tall fellow, dark and bewhiskered, with somber, dark eyes.
"Ah, good evening, my pretty maid. Taking a stroll all alone, eh? Won't you have a moonlight row with me?"
"No, thank you, sir; I am in a hurry to get home. Please stand aside," for he had placed himself in her way.
"Not so fast, pretty maid. It is good manners, I trow, to answer a stranger's courteous questions, is it not?" still barring her way. "Well, show me the way to Cliffdene."
The trembling girl pointed mutely back the way she had come.