She smiled up at him.
"Happy, are you?"
Her sigh was a benediction--an ecstatic surety that she was youth and beauty now as much as she would ever know. For another instant life was radiant and time a phantom and their strength eternal--then there was a b.u.mping, sc.r.a.ping sound as the rowboat sc.r.a.ped alongside.
Up the ladder scrambled the two gray-haired men, the officer and two of the sailors with their hands on their revolvers. Mr. Farnam folded his arms and stood looking at his niece.
"So," he said, nodding his head slowly.
With a sigh her arms unwound from Carlyle"s neck, and her eyes, transfigured and far away, fell upon the boarding party. Her uncle saw her upper lip slowly swell into that arrogant pout he knew so well.
"So," he repeated savagely. "So this is your idea of--of romance. A runaway affair, with a high-seas pirate."
Ardita glanced at him carelessly.
"What an old fool you are!" she said quietly.
"Is that the best you can say for yourself?"
"No," she said as if considering. "No, there"s something else. There"s that well-known phrase with which I have ended most of our conversations for the past few years--"Shut up!""
And with that she turned, included the two old men, the officer, and the two sailors in a curt glance of contempt, and walked proudly down the companionway.
But had she waited an instant longer she would have heard a sound from her uncle quite unfamiliar in most of their interviews. He gave vent to a whole-hearted amused chuckle, in which the second old man joined.
The latter turned briskly to Carlyle, who had been regarding this scene with an air of cryptic amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Well, Toby," he said genially, "you incurable, hare-brained, romantic chaser of rainbows, did you find that she was the person you wanted?"
Carlyle smiled confidently.
"Why--naturally," he said. "I"ve been perfectly sure ever since I first heard tell of her wild career. That"s why I had Babe send up the rocket last night."
"I"m glad you did," said Colonel Moreland gravely. "We"ve been keeping pretty close to you in case you should have trouble with those six strange n.i.g.g.e.rs. And we hoped we"d find you two in some such compromising position," he sighed. "Well, set a crank to catch a crank!"
"Your father and I sat up all night hoping for the best--or perhaps it"s the worst. Lord knows you"re welcome to her, my boy. She"s run me crazy. Did you give her the Russian bracelet my detective got from that Mimi woman?"
Carlyle nodded.
"Sh!" he said. "She"s coming on deck."
Ardita appeared at the head of the companion-way and gave a quick involuntary glance at Carlyle"s wrists. A puzzled look pa.s.sed across her face. Back aft the negroes had begun to sing, and the cool lake, fresh with dawn, echoed serenely to their low voices.
"Ardita," said Carlyle unsteadily.
She swayed a step toward him.
"Ardita," he repeated breathlessly, "I"ve got to tell you the--the truth. It was all a plant, Ardita. My name isn"t Carlyle. It"s Moreland, Toby Moreland. The story was invented, Ardita, invented out of thin Florida air."
She stared at him, bewildered amazement, dis
belief, and anger flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam"s mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for the expected crash.
But it did not come. Ardita"s face became suddenly radiant, and with a little laugh she went swiftly to young Moreland and looked up at him without a trace of wrath in her gray eyes.
"Will you swear," she said quietly, "that it was entirely a product of your own brain?"
"I swear," said young Moreland eagerly.
She drew his head down and kissed him gently.
"What an imagination!" she said softly and almost enviously. "I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life."
The negroes" voices floated drowsily back, mingled in an air that she had heard them sing before.
"Time is a thief;
Gladness and grief
Cling to the leaf
As it yellows----"
"What was in the bags?" she asked softly.
"Florida mud," he answered. "That was one of the two true things I told you."
"Perhaps I can guess the other one," she said; and reaching up on her tiptoes she kissed him softly in the ill.u.s.tration.