Adventure stories; Automobile travel -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Who knows? In the years to come, some wild freak of destiny may guide
the feet of my son to the secret of the candlestick. I shall live and
pray and likely die a childless, unhappy old man, whose Fate lies
buried profoundly in the sealed, invulnerable heart of a Spanish
candlestick--a stranger to his son.
Grant Satterlee.
It was the name of a wealthy bachelor whose lonely austerity of life
upon a yacht which rarely lingered in any port, whose quiet acts of
philanthropy as he roved hermitlike about the world, had been the talk
of continents.
Reading to the end, Carl dropped the scattering sheets and buried his
face in his hands, unnerved and shaking.
CHAPTER LI
IN THE ADIRONDACKS
To the wild, out-of-the-world hunting lodge in the Adirondack
wilderness of tree and lake and trout-haunted mountain stream which had
been part of Norman Westfall's heritage, came, one twilight of cloud
and wind, Diane, tanned with the wind and sun of a year's
wandering--and very tired.
Wild relief at Carl's tale of the jealous Indian, thoughts of Philip,
of Carl, of Keela, of Ronador, all these, persistently haunting the
girl's harassed mind, had wearied her greatly. Moreover, Aunt Agatha
was not restful; nor would she depart.
Wherefore, with the old habit when the voice of the forest called--when
school and city and travel had palled and tortured--Diane had traveled
feverishly north with Aunt Agatha, and thence to the Adirondack lodge
which had been her hermitage since early childhood and to which, by an
earlier compact, Aunt Agatha might not follow.
She had telegraphed old Roger to meet her with the buckboard. Now, as
they drove up at twilight, Annie, his wife, stood in the cottage
doorway. Beyond among the rustling trees stood the log lodge of Norman
Westfall, far enough away for solitude and near enough, as Aunt Agatha
frequently recalled with comfort, to the cottage of the two old
servants for safety.
The lake stretched away to a dusk-dimmed shore set in a whispering line
of ghostly birches.
"There's wood in the fireplace, dearie!" said old Annie, patting the
girl's shoulder. "It's a wee bit chill yet, for all the summer ought
well be here. And you've not run away to the old lodge to cook and
keep house and play gypsy this many a day!"
"No," said Diane, "I haven't." She spoke of the van and Johnny.
"Dear! Dear!" quavered Annie, raising wrinkled, wondering hands.
"Think of that now! And like you, too! And you grown so like your
father, child, that I can't well keep my eyes off your face. And brown
as a berry from the sun. I've set a bit of a lunch in the great room
yonder, dearie. You'll likely be too tired to-night to be a gypsy."
Old Roger, who had consigned the buckboard and horses to a tall awkward
country lad who had slouched forward from the shadows, hurried off to
light the fire in the lodge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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