Except for the ceaseless murmur of the insect life about them the night was absolutely still—so still that the striking of the ships' bells in the harbor came to them sharply across the surface of the water, and they could hear from time to time the splash of some great fish and the steady creaking of an oar in a rowlock that grew fainter and fainter as it grew further away, until it was drowned in the distance. Miss Langham was for a long time silent. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, gazing from side to side into the moonlight, and had apparently forgotten that Clay was present.
"Well," he said at last, "I think you appreciate it properly. I was afraid you would exclaim about it, and say it was fine, or charming, or something."
Miss Langham turned to him and smiled slightly. "And you told me once that you knew me so very well," she said.
Clay chose to forget much that he had said on that night when he had first met her. He knew that he had been bold then, and had dared to be so because he did not think he would see her again; but, now that he was to meet her every day through several months, it seemed better to him that they should grow to know each other as they really were, simply and sincerely, and without forcing the situation in any way.
So he replied, "I don't know you so well now. You must remember I haven't seen you for a year."
"Yes, but you hadn't seen me for twenty-two years then," she answered. "I don't think you have changed much," she went on. "I expected to find you gray with cares. Ted wrote us about the way you work all day at the mines and sit up all night over calculations and plans and reports. But you don't show it. When are you going to take us over the mines? To-morrow? I am very anxious to see them, but I suppose father will want to inspect them first. Hope knows all about them, I believe; she knows their names, and how much you have taken out, and how much you have put in, too, and what MacWilliams's railroad cost, and who got the contract for the ore pier. Ted told us in his letters, and she used to work it out on the map in father's study. She is a most energetic child; I think sometimes she should have been a boy. I wish I could be the help to any one that she is to my father and to me. Whenever I am blue or down she makes fun of me, and—"
"Why should you ever be blue?" asked Clay, abruptly.
"There is no real reason, I suppose," the girl answered, smiling, "except that life is so very easy for me that I have to invent some woes. I should be better for a few reverses." And then she went on in a lower voice, and turning her head away, "In our family there is no woman older than I am to whom I can go with questions that trouble me. Hope is like a boy, as I said, and plays with Ted, and my father is very busy with his affairs, and since my mother died I have been very much alone. A man cannot understand. And I cannot understand why I should be speaking to you about myself and my troubles, except—" she added, a little wistfully, "that you once said you were interested in me, even if it was as long as a year ago. And because I want you to be very kind to me, as you have been to Ted, and I hope that we are going to be very good friends."
She was so beautiful, standing in the shadow with the moonlight about her and with her hand held out to him, that Clay felt as though the scene were hardly real. He took her hand in his and held it for a moment. His pleasure in the sweet friendliness of her manner and in her beauty was so great that it kept him silent.
"Friends!" he laughed under his breath. "I don't think there is much danger of our not being friends. The danger lies," he went on, smiling, "in my not being able to stop there."