But he was honestly surprised and startled. “I have not the least idea. I did not know your mother had an enemy in the world. I heard that she had placed you in a convent to be educated, and was living there herself in quiet comfort.” “We were only two years at the convent. My mother’s health could not bear the sedentary life, and----” But suddenly she looked up and cried in a startled voice: “Why, how strange! I cannot see Great Head and the lights of Winthrop now. It seems misty.” “There is a fog, and it is growing quite thick, but I hope the wind will rise presently and blow it away,” he answered in a troubled tone. He had been watching the creeping mist with startled eyes while she talked to him. It had stolen on them like a thief in the night. They could not see the sky nor the stars now, and scarcely each other’s faces for the insidious white fog. Suddenly there came a sound that struck terror to their hearts. “A steamer is approaching us!” cried Francis Murray wildly. He leaned forward and caught her cold little hand. “Italy, my love, my darling, say that you forgive me for bringing you into this deadly peril, and let us pray God that we be not in the track of the coming horror!” She could not answer. Her lips seemed frozen, but Francis Murray lifted up his voice and shrieked a warning to the steamer. Too late! She bore down swiftly upon them, cutting the little dory in twain. CHAPTER X. BORNE ON THE TIDE. The gay party on shore discussed their warm coffee and elegant lunch with such keen appetites that the absentees were almost forgotten, until the increasing fog suddenly awoke a feeling of alarm in Ralph Allen’s breast. “I wish now that they had not gone out sailing,” he said. “It is no joke to be becalmed in a fog. What if they should be run down by a steamer?” Several members of the party began to express alarm, but Percy Seabright cried out boisterously: “Do not let us borrow trouble. It is not likely that anything will happen to them. Indeed, I envy Francis his good luck in getting becalmed in a fog with such a pretty girl. What a chance for a flirtation! Ten to one they come back engaged, and this winter we will get cards to the wedding.” He had quite recovered from his melancholy of a while ago, and was the life and soul of the party, singing songs and telling anecdotes to while away the long hours. The young people fell in with his infectious gaiety and took his bright view of the situation, all but Ralph and Alexie. These two felt seriously uneasy over their friends, and from time to time went arm in arm down to the beach, watching to see the fog lift, or the air freshen and the tide come in, but the winds remained quiescent in their mysterious caves, and the fog hung like a white gauze veil over a still and glassy sea.