I knew what to do. I wonder why she hates men so.
Perhaps it's because she never knew any that were real gentlemen. This
man is--but then he's a minister and that makes a wide gulf between
them in another way. I've seen the love of man and woman bridge some
wider gulfs though. But it can't with Lynde, I'm fearing. She's so
bitter at the mere speaking of love and marriage. I can't think why.
I'm sure her mother and Anthony were happy together, and that was all
she's ever seen of marriage. But I thought when she told me of meeting
this young man on the shore there was something in her look I'd never
noticed before--as if she'd found something in herself she'd never
known was there. But she'll never make friends with him and I can't.
If the Captain wasn't so queer--"

She stopped abruptly, for a tall lithe figure was coming up from the
shore. Lynde waved her hand as she drew near.

"Oh, Emily, I've had such a splendid sail. It was glorious. Bad Emily,
you've been carrying water. Didn't I tell you never to do that when I
was away?"

"I didn't have to do it. That young minister up at Rexton met me and
brought it up. He's nice, Lynde."

Lynde's brow darkened. She turned and walked away to the house without
a word.

On his way home that night Alan met Isabel King on the main shore
road. She carried an armful of pine boughs and said she wanted the
needles for a cushion. Yet the thought came into Alan's mind that she
was spying on him and, although he tried to dismiss it as unworthy, it
continued to lurk there.

For a week he avoided the shore, but there came a day when its
inexplicable lure drew him to it again irresistibly. It was a warm,
windy evening and the air was sweet and resinous, the lake misty and
blue. There was no sign of life about Four Winds and the shore seemed
as lonely and virgin as if human foot had never trodden it. The
Captain's yacht was gone from the little harbour where it was
generally anchored and, though every flutter of wind in the scrub firs
made Alan's heart beat expectantly, he saw nothing of Lynde Oliver. He
was on the point of turning homeward, with an unreasoning sense of
disappointment, when one of Lynde's dogs broke down through the hedge
of spruces, barking loudly.

Alan looked for Lynde to follow, but she did not, and he speedily saw
that there was something unusual about the dog's behaviour. The animal
circled around him, still barking excitedly, then ran off for a short
distance,