plainly had no immediate intentions of any sort.  She had no intention of lingering in camp, she said, accoutered solely with a hand bag!  And she had no intention—­no indeed!—­of departing until Diane went back with her to the deserted Westfall house in St. Augustine, with the green mould and the cobwebs and cranky spiders and the croquet set in the cellar.  Arcadia, if Diane had not crushed the memory out of her heart, had had a parallel.

Greatly disturbed by her aunt’s melancholy state of uncertainty, Diane one morning watched her set forth to gather lilies in the region of Philip’s camp.

The woodland about was very quiet.  Diane lay back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, listening to the welcome gypsy voices of wind and water, to the noisy clapper rails in the island grass at the end of the lake and to the drone of a motor on the road to the north.  Dimly conscious that Johnny was briskly scrubbing the rude table among the trees, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, with a nervous start, Johnny was down at the edge of the lake scouring pans with sand and whistling blithely.  Off there to the west, with Aunt Agatha fussing at his heels, Philip was good-naturedly gathering the lilies at the water’s edge.  And some one was approaching camp from the northern road.

Diane glanced carelessly to the north and sprang to her feet with wild scarlet in her cheeks.

Ronador was coming through the forest.

His color was a little high, his eyes, beneath the peak of his motoring cap profoundly apologetic, but he was easier in manner than Diane.

“I’m offending, I know,” he said steadily, “and I crave forgiveness, but muster an indifferent gift of patience as best I may, I can not wait.  It is weeks, you recall—­”

Diane flushed brightly.

“Yes,” she said.  “I know.  I have been in the Everglades.”

“Your aunt told me.”  Ronador searched her face suddenly with peculiar intentness.  He might have added, with perfect truth, that to Aunt Agatha, who had indiscreetly afforded him a glimpse of her niece’s letter, might be attributed the halting of the long, black car on the road to the north.  “You have no single word of welcome, then!” he reproached abruptly and impatiently brushed his hair back from his forehead with a hand that shook a little.

From the north came the clatter of a motorcycle.

Diane held out her hand.

“Let us make a mutual compact!” she exclaimed frankly.  “I have overstrained your patience—­you have startled me.  Let us both forgive.  In a sense we have neither of us kept strictly to the letter of our agreement.”

Ronador bent with deference over the girl’s outstretched hand and brushed it lightly with his lips, unconscious that her face had grown very white and troubled.  Nor in his impetuous relief was he aware that other eyes had witnessed the eloquent tableau and that Aunt Agatha had arrived in camp with an escort who quietly deposited an armful of dripping lilies upon the camp table and oddly enough made no effort to retire.