on. Under his instructions she had learned
to hold the tiller in sailing in and out of the inlet; to swim over
hand; to dive from a plank, no matter how high the jump; and to join in
all his outdoor sports. Lucy had been his constant inspiration in all
of this. She had surveyed the field that first night of their meeting
and had discovered that the young man's personality offered the only
material in Warehold available for her purpose. With him, or someone
like him--one who had leisure and freedom, one who was quick and strong
and skilful (and Bart was all of these)--the success of her summer
would be assured. Without him many of her plans could not be carried
out.

And her victory over him had been an easy one. Held first by the spell
of her beauty and controlled later by her tact and stronger will, the
young man's effrontery--almost impudence at times--had changed to a
certain respectful subservience, which showed itself in his constant
effort to please and amuse her. When they were not sailing they were
back in the orchard out of sight of the house, or were walking together
nobody knew where. Often Bart would call for her immediately after
breakfast, and the two would pack a lunch-basket and be gone all day,
Lucy arranging the details of the outing, and Bart entering into them
with a dash and an eagerness which, to a man of his temperament,
cemented the bond between them all the closer. Had they been two fabled
denizens of the wood--she a nymph and he a dryad--they could not have
been more closely linked with sky and earth.

As for Jane, she watched the increasing intimacy with alarm. She had
suddenly become aroused to the fact that Lucy's love affair with Bart
was going far beyond the limits of prudence. The son of Captain
Nathaniel Holt, late of the Black Ball Line of packets, would always be
welcome as a visitor at the home, the captain being an old and tried
friend of her father's; but neither Bart's education nor prospects,
nor, for that matter, his social position--a point which usually had
very little weight with Jane--could possibly entitle him to ask the
hand of the granddaughter of Archibald Cobden in marriage. She began to
regret that she had thrown them together. Her own ideas of reforming
him had never contemplated any such intimacy as now existed between the
young man and her sister. The side of his nature which he had always
shown her had been one of respectful attention to her wishes; so much
so tha