"But if I don't go now, I can't go until to-morrow noon; before that time I shouldn't meet a boat that stops at our landing. That would make a delay of twenty-four hours." She looked at him as she said this, with a sort of unconscious appeal.

"I doubt whether anything very exciting could happen over there in twice twenty-four; it isn't an exciting place."

"Of course you think me obstinate. But I cannot help feeling that I ought to go."

"_Perfectly_ natural," said Betty. "I should feel just the same in your place--I know I should--not hearing for _so_ long."

"It's that--the silence," said Margaret. "I have been disturbed about it for several days."

"Go, by all means, if you feel in that way," said Winthrop. "I haven't the least desire to prevent it--as you seem to think; I only say that I shall go too."

"Yes; and that is what I don't want." She turned away and stepped out on the balcony to scan the sky.

A dark haze edged the eastern horizon. It was far away at present, lying low down on the sea, but it would come, it was already coming, westward; a clear, empty-looking s.p.a.ce of cold pearl-hued light preceded it. Here on the lagoon the atmosphere was breathlessly still, not a sound of any kind stirred the warm silence. "Perhaps it will be only a rain," said Margaret, rather helplessly. She looked very uncomfortable.

"Yes, I reckon that's all it _will_ be," said Betty, who had followed her to the balcony door. "And then, too, if it _should_ be anything more, Mr. Winthrop will be with you, of course; that is, in case you decide to go; and if you don't go, why then he won't, you know; so either way, it's all for the best."

Margaret turned and came back into the drawing-room. Winthrop was standing by the table where she had left him; his eyes met hers, she saw that he would not yield. "I don't dare give it up, I don't dare wait,"

she broke out with sudden agitation. "Something has happened, nothing less could have kept both of the men from writing, when I gave them my express orders. I don't understand why you don't agree with me."

"You see probabilities, and Lanse isn't a devotee of probabilities, as a general thing. Didn't the last letter say that he had begun to walk a little?--with the aid of two canes? By this time it is one cane, and he is camping out. And he has carried off the whole force of the house to cook for him."

Betty thought this an excellent joke, and laughed delightedly over it.

"If he is camping out, it is quite time I was back," answered Margaret, trying to speak lightly. She took up her gloves. "Good-by, Aunt Betty; you will write to me?"

"Yes, indeed, I will," said Betty, kissing her. "Poor dear, you're like Mahomet's coffin, aren't you? suspended between heaven and--and the other place. And I'm _so_ glad you've decided as you have, because you will be _much_ easier in your mind, though of course, too, Mr. Winthrop was _quite_ right of course, about being afraid for you in case you were alone, for sometimes we _do_ have the most dreadful gusts, and the pine-trees are blown down all _over_ the barrens and right across the roads; but then, all the same, if you _hadn't_ decided, you would be _so_ uncomfortable, like the old man and his son and the donkey, who never got anywhere, you know, because they tried to please too many people, or was it that they had to carry the donkey at last? at any rate, certainly, there's no donkey _here_. Well, good-by, dear; I shall be so _dreadfully_ anxious about you."

"I am quite sure"--this was called down the stairs after Margaret had descended--"I'm quite sure, dear, that it will be _nothing_ but a rain."

A carriage was waiting at the lower door; Winthrop's man was to drive; but the horses were not his; they were a pair Margaret had sent for.

Margaret took her place, and Winthrop followed her; Betty, who had now hurried out to the balcony, waved her handkerchief in farewell as long as she could see them.

Margaret had been at East Angels for nearly a month, called there by a sudden illness which had attacked Mrs. Rutherford. It was not a dangerous illness; but it was one that entailed a good deal of suffering, and Margaret had been immediately summoned.

By this time everybody in Gracias knew how dependent "dear Katrina" was in reality upon her niece, in spite of her own majestic statements to the contrary. No one was surprised therefore, when, after the new illness had declared itself, and Mrs. Rutherford had said, plaintively, that she should think Margaret would feel that she _ought_ to be there, Betty immediately sat down and wrote a note.

After two weeks of suffering, Mrs. Rutherford had begun to improve. She had now almost attained her former comparatively comfortable condition, and Margaret was returning to the house on the river.

The light carriage crossed the barren rapidly; the same hushed silence continued, the pine-trees which Betty had seen in a vision, prostrate, did not stir so much as one of their green needles. Margaret and Winthrop spoke occasionally, but they did not talk; anything they should say would necessarily be shared by the man who was driving. But conversation between them was not much more free when the steamer was taking them up the river. They sat on the deck together at some distance from the other pa.s.sengers, but their words were few; what they said had even a perfunctory sound. They exchanged some remarks about Garda which contained rather more of animation.

Garda's last letter to Margaret had borne at the head of the page the magic word "Venice." Garda had appeared to think life there magical indeed. "She admires everything; she is delightfully happy," was Margaret's comment.

"How does she say it?"

"You have heard her talk."

"Not as Mrs. Lucian Spenser. And from Venice!"

"I shall tell her to write her next letter to you."

"I have no doubt she would. I see you are afraid to quote."

"Afraid?" said Margaret, in a tone of cold inquiry. And then, with the same cold intonation, she repeated two or three of Garda's joyous phrases.

"Yes, she is happy! Of course it's magnanimous in me to say so, but I owe her no grudge; on the contrary, it has been refreshing to see, in this nineteenth century, a girl so frankly in love. She would have married Lucian Spenser just the same if they neither of them had had a cent; she would have made any sacrifice for him--don't you think so?"

"Yes; but it wouldn't have been a sacrifice to her."

"Bravo! I gave you such a chance to say insidious things."

Margaret smiled a little at this suggestion. Then, in the silence that followed, the old look came back to her face--a look of guarded reserve, which, however, evidently covered apprehension.

She had, indeed, been in great dread. The dread was lest the agitation which had overpowered her during that last conversation she had had with Winthrop before she went back to her husband, should reappear. This brief journey of theirs together was the first perfect opportunity he had had since then to call it forth again; up to to-day there had been no opportunity, she had prevented opportunity. But now she was at his mercy; any one of a hundred sentences which he could so easily say, would suffice to bring back that emotion which suffocated her, and made her (as she knew, though he did not) powerless. But, so far, he had said none of these things. She was grateful to him for every moment of the respite.

Thus they sat there, appearing no doubt to the other pa.s.sengers a sufficiently happy and noticeably fortunate pair.

For Winthrop had about him a certain look which, in America, confers distinction--that intangible air that belongs to the man who, well educated to begin with, has gone forth into the crowded course, and directed and carried along his fortunes by his own genius and energy to the goal of success. It is a look of power restrained, of comprehension; of personal experience, personal knowledge; not theory. The unsuccessful men who met Winthrop--this very steamer carried several of them--were never angry with him for his good-fortune; they could see that he had not always been one of the idle, though he might be idle now; they could see that he knew that life was difficult, that he had, as they would have expressed it, "been through it himself," and was not disposed to underrate its perplexities, its oppressions. They could see, too, not a few of them, poor fellows! that here was the man who had not allowed himself to dally with the inertia, the dilatoriness, the self-indulgent weakness, folly, or worse, which had rendered their own lives so ineffectual. They envied him, very possibly; but they did not hate him; for he was not removed from them, set apart from them, by any bar; he was only what they might themselves have been, perhaps; at least what they would have liked to be.

And the women on board all envied Margaret. They thought her very fair as she sat there, her eyes resting vaguely on the water, her cheeks showing a faint, fixed flush, the curling waves of her hair rippling back in a thick ma.s.s above the little ear. Everything she wore was so beautiful, too--from the hat, with its waving plume, and the long soft gloves, to the rich shawl, which lay where it had fallen over the back of her chair. They were sure that she was happy, because she looked so fortunate; any one of them would have changed places with her blindly, without asking a question.

The steamer stopped at the long pier which was adorned with the little post-office. The postmaster had made a dim illumination within his official shanty by means of a lantern, and here Margaret waited while the boat was made ready by the negroes who were to row them down the five additional miles of coast which Lanse had considered the proper s.p.a.ce between himself and the hotel, to keep him from feeling "hived in." The night was very dark, the water motionless, the men rowed at a good speed; the two pa.s.sengers landed at the little home-pier in safety, and the negroes turned back.

As soon as Margaret had ascended the winding path far enough to come within sight of the house, "No lights!" she said.

"That's nothing," Winthrop answered; "Lanse is probably outside somewhere, smoking." Then, as the path made another turn, "If there are no lights in front, there are enough at the back," he said.

From the rear of the house light shone out in a broad glare from an open door. Margaret hurried thither. But the kitchen was empty; Dinah, the old cook, her equally ancient cousin Rose, and Primus, the black boy, all three were absent. Rapidly Winthrop went through the house, he found no one; Lanse's room, as well as the parlor and dining-room, appeared not to have been used that day, while the smaller rooms occupied by the two men who were in attendance upon him had an even more deserted air.

"Their trunks are gone," said Margaret, who met Winthrop here. "It is all so strange!" she murmured, looking at him as if for some solution, her eyes dark in the yellow light of the lamp she held.

Winthrop agreed with her in thinking it strange; but he did not tell her so. They went back to the kitchen, none of the servants had returned.

"They are probably somewhere about the grounds; but you must sit down and rest while I go and look for them; you are tired."

"No, I'm not tired," answered Margaret, contradicting this statement.

"Come," he said, authoritatively. Taking the lamp from her, he led the way towards the parlor which she had made so pretty.

She followed him, and sank into the easy-chair he drew forward. "Don't wait," she said.

"But if you feel ill--"

"It's nothing, I'm only nervous."

"I shall probably bring them back in five minutes."

But twenty minutes pa.s.sed before he returned with Dinah and Rose, whom he had found some distance down the sh.o.r.e. The two old women were much excited, and voluble. Their story was that "Ma.r.s.e Horrel" must be "lorse;" he had started early that morning in his canoe to go up the Juana, and had not returned; when it grew towards evening, as he had never before been out so long, they had become alarmed, and had sent Primus over to East Angels; the steamer that had carried him, and the one that had brought "Mis' Horrel" back, must have pa.s.sed each other on the way. They did not send Primus to the hotel, because "Ma.r.s.e Horrel,"