esta. Ripples, chop, and a growing swell followed each other with that
marvellous rapidity common to large bodies of fresh water. It broke the
monotony of steady cleaving through dead calm. Stella was a good sailor,
and she rather enjoyed it when the _Chickamin_ began to lift and yaw off
before the following seas that ran up under her fantail stern.

After about an hour's run, with the south wind beginning to whip the
crests of the short seas into white foam, the boat bore in to a landing
behind a low point. Here Abbey disembarked, after taking the trouble to
come aft and shake hands with polite farewell. Standing on the float,
hat in hand, he bowed his sleek blond head to Stella.

"I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as Benton
jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to stop over
awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's in too big a
hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon."

Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom this bland
friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off their talk. As
the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white come down toward the
float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little farther out through an
opening in the woods, she saw a white and green bungalow, low and
rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock three hundred yards back
from shore. There was an encircling area of smooth lawn, a place
restfully inviting.

Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was smitten with
a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had assailed her fitfully
in the last four days. And while the _Chickamin_ was still plowing the
inshore waters on an even keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and
joined her brother in the pilot house.

"Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she remarked.

"Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie
grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,--up-to-date cottage, gardeners,
tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, and all that.
But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what they want to do.
They've made it in timber, as I expect to make mine. You didn't
particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, did you?"

"I? Of course not," she responded.

"Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," Charlie
drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any tentative advances.
The women put on lo