"She might have told us. We could have gone with her," said Dolly, irritably. "I don't like her being alone." "Oh, she is safe enough, as far as that goes," answered the mother, comfortably. "She has taken old Donato, who, in spite of his seventy years, is an excellent sailor; and he has, too, a very good boat." Dolly went to the window. "You are not in the least thinking of Ruth, mother! You are thinking of Jared; you are thinking that if he takes that place in New York, we must somehow get up there to see him this summer; and you are planning to go to that boarding-house on Staten Island that the commodore told you about." Mrs. Franklin, who really was thinking of Staten Island, rolled a lamplighter the wrong way. "It is happening oftener and oftener!" she said to herself. "Is she going to die?" And she glanced towards her invalid daughter with the old pang of loving pity quickened for the moment to trepidation. Dolly's back was turned; she was gazing down the inlet. The house, which was formerly the residence of General Worth, the Military Governor of Florida, commanded an uninterrupted view of the Matanzas north and south, and, over the low line of Anastasia Island, even the smallest sail going towards the ocean was visible. But in spite of this long expanse of water, Dolly could not see old Donato's boat. "His Grand suspects nothing! Are mothers always so blind?" she thought. "So secure? But she shall never know anything through _me_--dear old Grand! Ruth has of course gone to say good-bye to the places which are associated in her mind with that hateful Willoughby. If I could only have known it, I would have kept her from it at any price. These long hours alone which she covets so--they are the worst things, the worst!" Ruth's boat was far out of sight; at this moment she was landing on Anastasia at the point where she had disembarked with Walter on the day of the excursion. Telling the old Minorcan to wait for her, she sought for the little Carib trail, and followed it inland to the pool. Here she spent half an hour, seated in the loop of the vine where she had sat before. Then, rising, she slowly retraced their former course along the low ridge. Since Walter's departure--he had left St. Augustine at dawn after that strange evening visit--Ruth had been the prey of two moods, tossed from one to the other helplessly; for the feelings which these moods by turn excited were so strong that she had had no volition of her own--she had been powerless against them. One of these mental states (the one that possessed her now) was joy. The other was aching pain.