"What you heard by stealth, creeping about here at night, prying into other people's affairs!" "I have pledged myself to care for Miss Pat." "It's noble of you, Donovan!" and he stepped away from me, grinning. "Miss Pat suggests nothing to me but 'button, button, who's got the button?' She's a bloomin' aristocrat, while I'm the wealth-cursed child of democracy." "You're a charming specimen!" I growled. It was plain that he saw nothing out of the way in thus conniving with Helen Holbrook against her aunt, and that he had not been struck by the enormity of the girl's conduct in taking money from him. He drew in his canoe as I debated with myself what to do with him. "You've got to leave the lake," I said. "You've got to go." "Then I'm going, thank you!" He sprang into the canoe, driving it far out of my reach; his paddle splashed, and he was gone. "Is that you, sir?" called Ijima behind me. "I thought I heard some one talking." "It is nothing, Ijima." CHAPTER X THE FLUTTER OF A HANDKERCHIEF As a bell in a chime Sets its twin-note a-ringing, As one poet's rhyme Wakes another to singing, So once she has smiled All your thoughts are beguiled, And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing. Each grace is a jewel Would ransom the town; Her speech has no cruel, Her praise is renown; 'Tis in her as though Beauty, Resigning to Duty The scepter, had still kept the purple and crown. --_Robert Underwood Johnson_. The next morning at eight o'clock I sent a note to Miss Pat, asking if she and the other ladies of her house would not take breakfast with me at nine; and she replied, on her quaint visiting-card, in an old-fashioned hand, that she and Helen would be glad to come, but that Sister Margaret begged to be excused. It had been in my mind from the first to ask them to dine at Glenarm, and now I wished to see this girl, to test, weigh, study her, as soon as possible after her meeting with Gillespie. I wished to see how she would bear herself before her aunt and me with that dark transaction on her conscience. The idea pleased me, and when I saw the two women coming through the school garden I met them at the gate.