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Alan, realizing that he could not help her and that his presence only made matters worse, went away perplexedly. The following week was a miserable one for him. His duties were distasteful to him and meeting his people a positive torture. Sometimes Mrs. Danby looked dubiously at him and seemed on the point of saying something–but never said it. Isabel King watched him when they met, with bold probing eyes. In his abstraction he did not notice this any more than he noticed a certain subtle change which had come over the members of his congregation–as if a breath of suspicion had blown across them and troubled their confidence and trust. Once Alan would have been keenly and instantly conscious of this slight chill; now he was not even aware of it.

When he ventured to go back to Four Winds he found the Captain on the point of starting off for a cruise in his yacht. He was urbane and friendly, utterly ignoring the incident of Alan’s last visit and regretting that business compelled him to go down the lake. Alan saw him off with small regret and turned joyfully to Lynde, who was walking under the pines with her dogs. She looked pale and tired and her eyes were still troubled, but she smiled proudly and made no reference to what had happened.

“I’m going to put these flowers on Mother’s grave,” she said, lifting her slender hands filled with late white roses. “Mother loved flowers and I always keep them near her when I can. You may come with me if you like.”

Alan had known Lynde’s mother was buried under the pines but he had never visited the spot before. The grave was at the westernmost end of the pine wood, where it gave out on the lake, a beautiful spot, given over to silence and shadow.

“Mother wished to be buried here,” Lynde said, kneeling to arrange her flowers. “Father would have taken her anywhere but she said she wanted to be near us and near the lake she had loved so well. Father buried her himself. He wouldn’t have anyone else do anything for her. I am so glad she is here. It would have been terrible to have seen her taken far away–my sweet little mother.”

“A mother is the best thing in the world–I realized that when I lost mine,” said Alan gently. “How long is it since your mother died?”

“Three years. Oh, I thought I should die too when she did. She was very ill–she was never strong, you know–but I never thought she could die. There was a year then–part of the time I didn’t believe in God at all and the rest I hated Him. I was very wicked but I was so unhappy. Father had so many dreadful moods and–there was something else. I used to wish to die.”

She bowed her head on her hands and gazed moodily on the ground. Alan, leaning against a pine tree, looked down at her. The sunlight fell through the swaying boughs on her glory of burnished hair and lighted up the curve of cheek and chin against the dark background of wood brown. All the defiance and wildness had gone from her for the time and she seemed like a helpless, weary child. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.

“You must resemble your mother,” he said absently, as if thinking aloud. “You don’t look at all like your father.”

Lynde shook her head.

“No, I don’t look like Mother either. She was tiny and dark–she had a sweet little face and velvet-brown eyes and soft curly dark hair. Oh, I remember her look so well. I wish I did resemble her. I loved her so–I would have done anything to save her suffering and trouble. At least, she died in peace.”

There was a curious note of fierce self-gratulation in the girl’s voice as she spoke the last sentence. Again Alan felt the unpleasant impression that there was much in her that he did not understand–might never understand–although such understanding was necessary to perfect friendship. She had never spoken so freely of her past life to him before, yet he felt somehow that something was being kept back in jealous repression. It must be something connected with her father, Alan thought. Doubtless, Captain Anthony’s past would not bear inspection, and his daughter knew it and dwelt in the shadow of her knowledge. His heart filled with aching pity for her; he raged secretly because he was so powerless to help her. Her girlhood had been blighted, robbed of its meed of happiness and joy. Was she likewise to miss her womanhood? Alan’s hands clenched involuntarily at the unuttered question.