"Oh!" said Philip, disappointed. "The other lady said the flowers were _her_ children, and I thought maybe the squirrels were yours ... Goodby!" When Margaret got to the hotel Mrs. Pennybacker was partly packed. She had foreseen what the next move would be. John Harcourt swore softly. "She is the most capricious woman I ever saw!" he declared to Bess on the dummy. "Now we're cheated out of that inland trip again!" "Suppose you stay over and take the inland trip alone," she suggested. "Then you could make sure of it. We haven't any baggage that needs attending to." "I suppose I am needed only in the capacity of baggage tender," he reproached her. At Petoskey, after putting them on the train, he stepped outside and delayed his coming back until Bess began to wonder if he had taken her at her word. But he swung himself on as the train started. "I've just seen Smeltzer out on the platform. Funny how I run across that fellow! He's on his way to Chicago. Says We-que-ton-sing is too slow for him. Had to go to Harbor Springs to get a drink." Margaret, in her safe corner, with Philip close beside her and the train speeding away from Smeltzer, was thinking, "I wonder if that could all have been imagination. Perhaps he wasn't the man at all!" CHAPTER XIX THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA The morning after they got back to Mackinac Margaret invited Mr. Harcourt to take a walk with her, and for almost the first time since he had known her she left Philip behind. Bess looked at them a little wonderingly when they went out, and still more so when they returned, for Margaret's face showed traces of tears and John Harcourt was unusually serious. She had led the way to the fort steps and on the top landing where so many confidences have been shared, she told him her story. She had agreed with Mrs. Pennybacker the night before that the time had come now when he should be told. It seemed almost his right. She had told it very simply, not striving after effect; but the pathos of that story was in the situation, not in any words that might be used to depict it. Harcourt was strongly moved by what he heard. As they neared the hotel on their return she said to him, "I am known here only as Mrs. Osborne. Perhaps you'd better continue to call me so." "Let me call you Margaret," he begged. "I cannot bear to call you by a false name and I do not dare to use your true one." And she consented, for she felt that her confidence, far more than anything that he could call her, had set the seal upon their friendship. After this he fell into the habit of looking out for her, of going to the boats when they came in and haunting the hotels. True, Smeltzer had told him he was on his way to Chicago, but he had not implicit confidence in that gentleman's word. But though he kept up a close surreptitious watch, no Smeltzer appeared.