"Oh, I am, if you must know! I have every intention of marrying her myself!"

I ran away from the protest that was faltering upon her lips, and strode through the garden. I had just reached Glenarm gate on my way back to the boat-house when a woman's voice called softly and Sister Margaret hurried round a turn of the garden path.

"Mr. Donovan!"

There was anxiety in the voice, and more anxious still was Sister Margaret's face as she came toward me in her brown habit, her hands clasped tensely before her. She had evidently been watching for me, and drew back from the gate into a quiet recess of the garden. Her usual repose was gone and her face, under its white coif, showed plainly her distress.

"I have bad news--Miss Helen has gone! I'm afraid something has happened to her."

"She can't have gone far, Sister Margaret. When did you miss her?" I asked quietly; but I confess that I was badly shaken. My confident talk about the girl with Miss Pat but a moment before echoed ironically in my memory.

"She did not come down for breakfast with her aunt or me, but I thought nothing of it, as I have urged both of them to breakfast up-stairs.

Miss Patricia went out for a walk. An hour ago I tried Helen's door and found it unlocked and her room empty. When or how she left I don't know. She seems to have taken nothing with her."

"Can you tell a lie, Sister Margaret?"

She stared at me with so shocked an air that I laughed. "A lie in a good cause, I mean? Miss Pat must not know that her niece has gone--if she has gone! She has probably taken one of the canoes for a morning paddle; or, we will a.s.sume that she has borrowed one of the Glenarm horses, as she has every right to do, for a morning gallop, and that she has lost her way or gone farther than she intended. There are a thousand explanations!"

"But they hardly touch the fact that she was gone all night; or that a strange man brought a note addressed in Helen's handwriting to her aunt only an hour ago."

"Kidnapped!"--and I laughed aloud as the meaning of her disappearance flashed upon me!

"I don't like your way of treating this matter!" said Sister Margaret icily. "The girl may die before she can be brought back."

"No, she won't--my word for it, Sister Margaret. Please give me the letter!"

"But it is not for you!"

"Oh, yes, it is! You wouldn't have Miss Pat subjected to the shock of a demand for ransom. Worse than that, Miss Pat has little enough faith in Helen as it is; and such a move as this would be final. This kidnapping is partly designed as a punishment for me, and I propose to take care of it without letting Miss Pat know. She shall never know!"

Sister Margaret, only half convinced, drew an envelope from her girdle and gave it to me doubtfully. I glanced at the superscription and then tore it across, repeating the process until it was a ma.s.s of tiny particles, which I poured into Sister Margaret's hands.

"Burn them! Now Miss Pat will undoubtedly ask for her niece at once.

I suggest that you take care that she is not distressed by Helen's absence. If it is necessary to reward your house-maid for her discretion--" I said with hesitation.

"Oh, I disarranged Helen's bed so that the maid wouldn't know!"--and Sister Margaret blushed.

"Splendid! I can teach you nothing, Sister Margaret! Please help me this much further: get one of Miss Helen's dresses--that blue one she plays tennis in, perhaps--and put it in a bag of some kind and give it to my j.a.p when he calls for it in ten minutes. Now listen to me carefully, Sister Margaret: I shall meet you here at twelve o'clock with a girl who shall be, to all intents and purposes, Helen Holbrook.

In fact, she will be some one else. Now I expect you to carry off the situation through luncheon and until nightfall, when I expect to bring Helen--the real Helen--back here. Meanwhile, tell Miss Pat anything you like, quoting me! Good-by!"

I left her abruptly and was running toward Glenarm House to rouse Ijima, when I b.u.mped into Gillespie, who had been told at the house that I was somewhere in the grounds.

"What's doing, Irishman?" he demanded.

"Nothing, b.u.t.tons; I'm just exercising."

His white flannels were as fresh as the morning, and he wore a little blue cap perched saucily on the side of his head.

"I was pondering," he began, "the futility of man's effort to be helpful toward his fellows."

He leaned upon his stick and eyed me with solemn vacuity.

"I suppose I'll have to hear it; go on."

"I was always told in my youth that when an opportunity to do good offered one should seize upon it at once. No hesitation, no trifling!

Only a few years ago I wandered into a little church in a hill town of Ma.s.sachusetts where I waited for the Boston Express. It was a beautiful Sunday evening--I shall never forget it!" he sighed. "I am uncertain whether I was led thither by good impulse, or only because the pews were more comfortable than the benches at the railway station.

I arrived early and an usher seated me up front near a window and gave me an armful of books and a pamphlet on foreign missions. Other people began to come in pretty soon; and then I heard a lot of giggling and a couple of church pillars began chasing a stray dog up and down the aisles. I was placing my money on the taller pillar; he had the best reach of leg, and, besides, the other chap had side whiskers, which are not good for sprinting,--they offer just so much more resistance to the wind. The unseemliness of the thing offended my sense of propriety.

The sound of the chase broke in harshly upon my study of Congo missions. After much pursuing the dog sought refuge between my legs.

I picked him up tenderly in my arms and dropped him gently, Donovan, gently, from the window. Now wasn't that seizing an opportunity when you found it, so to speak, underfoot?"

"No doubt of it at all. Hurry with the rest of it, b.u.t.tons!"

"Well, that pup fell with a sickening yelp through a skylight into the bas.e.m.e.nt where the choir was vesting itself, and hit a bishop--actually struck a young and promising bishop who had never done anything to me.

They got the constable and made a horrible row, and besides paying for the skylight I had to give the church a new organ to square myself with the bishop, who was a friend of a friend of mine in Kentucky who once gave me a tip on the Derby. Since then the very thought of foreign missions makes me ill, I always hear that dog--it was the usual village mongrel of evil ancestry--crashing through the skylight. What's doing this morning, Irishman?"

I linked my arm in his and led the way toward Glenarm House. There was much to be done before I could bring together the warring members of the house of Holbrook, and Gillespie could, I felt, be relied on in emergencies. He broke forth at once.

"I want to see her--I've got to see her!"

"Who--Helen? Then you'll have to wait a while, for she's gone for a paddle or a gallop, I'm not sure which, and won't be back for a couple of hours. But you have grown too daring. Miss Pat is still here, and you can't expect me to arrange meetings for you every day in the year."

"I've got to see her," he repeated, and his tone was utterly joyless.

"I don't understand her, Donovan."

"Man is not expected to understand woman, my dear b.u.t.tons. At the casino last night everything was as gay as an octogenarian's birthday cake."

He stopped in the shadow of the house and seized my arm.

"You told her something about me last night. She was all right until you took her away and talked with her at the casino. On the way home she was moody and queer--a different girl altogether. You are not on the square; you are playing on too many sides of this game."

"You're in love, that's all. These suspicions and apprehensions are leading symptoms. Up there at the casino, with the water washing beneath and the stars overhead and the band playing waltzes, a spell was upon you both. Even a hardened old sinner like me could feel it.

I've had palpitations all day! Cheer up! In your own happy phrase, everything points to plus."

"I tell you she turned on me, and that you are responsible for it!"--and he glared at me angrily.

"Now, b.u.t.tons! You're not going to take that att.i.tude toward me, after all I have done for you! I really took some trouble to arrange that little meeting last night; and here you come with sad eye and mournful voice and rebuke me!"

"I tell you she was different. She had never been so kind to me as she was there at the casino; but as we came back she changed, and was ready to fling me aside. I asked her to leave this place and marry me to-day, and she only laughed at me!"

"Now, b.u.t.tons, you are letting your imagination get the better of your common sense. If you're going to take your lady's moods so hard you'd better give up trying to understand the ways of woman. It's wholly possible that Helen was tired and didn't want to be made love to. It seems to me that you are singularly lacking in consideration. But I can't talk to you all morning; I have other things to do; but if you will find a cool corner of the house and look at picture-books until I'm free I'll promise to be best man for you when you're married; and I predict your marriage before Christmas--a happy union of the ancient houses of Holbrook and Gillespie. Run along like a good boy and don't let Miss Pat catch sight of you."

"Do you keep a goat, a donkey or a mule--any of the more ruminative animals?" he asked with his saddest intonation.

"The cook keeps a parrot, and there's a donkey in one of the pastures."

"Good. Are his powers of vocalization unimpaired?"

"First rate. I occasionally hear his vesper hymn. He's in good voice."