Simultaneously the smiles vanished from his handsome face. A naphtha launch just then passing into this inlet had left behind it a swell that made the canoe containing the two girls rock perilously from side to side. Agnes, evidently recognizing the danger, sat quite still, but Edith Clare threw herself forward with a scream and clasped her companion in her arms. The canoe, upsetting, plunged both occupants into the broad-leafed greenery, under which they sank at once out of sight.
“Can they swim?” asked Russell, quickening his stroke.
“Yes, both of them, if they are not caught below,” answered Benedict, hoarsely.
Their canoe shot madly forward. Prompt as were the people in the naphtha launch in turning back to attempt rescue, they could not vie with these men in their eager effort to reach the scene of the disaster. It was soon fatally evident that while one of the young women had arisen to the surface and was keeping herself afloat, something had happened to prevent the reappearance of the other. Jack was not so quick as Hubert Russell to see that it was Agnes who was missing. With misery clutching at his heart-strings, Russell said, entreatingly:
“Let me save her for you, Jack! It will be something to pay back all you’ve done for me if I can put the woman I’ve loved ever since I first laid eyes on her into your arms again.”
He could not see that Jack was not even looking toward the place where Agnes had gone down. All his thoughts were directed to the spot whence Edith Clare called out to him to save her. “Coming, my darling; have no fear,” Jack answered her, tenderly.
“RUSSELL REAPPEARED, BRINGING WITH HIM THE SODDEN FORM OF AGNES.”
Russell, without an instant’s further delay, dived overboard. The canoe, violently shaken, was yet steadied by the other occupant, who succeeded in reaching Edith and extricating her in safety from her perilous surroundings.
An anxious interval, and Russell reappeared, bringing with him the sodden form of Agnes, who, snared and held under water by the green serpents of the lily-stems, was quite inanimate. They got her aboard the launch and hurried back to the yacht, where poor Mrs. Cartwright received them wringing her hands over this sad ending of her day of pleasure. During the hour while Russell waited in an agony of fear on deck, Jack Benedict, who stood beside him, became for the first time aware of his friend’s long ordeal of repressed feeling for Agnes.