Tillie was gone.
CHAPTER XVI
SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE TWILIGHT
That evening, while the sky was still pink and the water changing from blue to purple and then to gold, Florence went for a row alone. She wanted to think. The events of that day had stirred her to the very depths. She had not believed that there were such persons in the world as those three young people who had attempted to drive them from Tillie’s fishing hole.
“Rich, that’s it,” she told herself. Yet, in the depths of her heart she knew that this was not all.
“Tillie called them crooks, gamblers,” she told herself. “A professional gambler must have a cold heart. He takes money in an unfair way from men who have earned it and need it. How can one expect to find a warm heart in the breast of a gambler’s son?”
As she asked herself this question, she rounded a small island that lay a little way out from the point upon which the palatial summer home of Erie, the millionaire, had been erected.
She barely missed bumping into a canoe that lay motionless in the water. The canoe held a solitary occupant, a girl of sixteen.
Instinctively Florence knew that this was the millionaire’s daughter, she who had lost the three priceless rubies in a gambling den.
Instantly her heart warmed. The girl was beautiful. She was rich. Yet, on her face was a look of loneliness and sadness such as Florence had seldom seen on any face.
“It’s not so much the disgrace of losing the rubies,” she told herself. “This girl is young. She is just launching out into life. She has found it strange and rather terrible. She doesn’t understand.”