Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/236

226 of the pier, where it joined the bank. She saw the group which she had just left approach the rustic seats, draw nearer to her mother, pass her mother! Thank kind heaven above, they didn't stop! Her mother didn't introduce herself to them after all! Laurel breathed freer. But only for a short time. It soon became evident that her mother was going to wait for her at the rustic seats until her errand at the end of the pier, whatever it was, was finished.

Laurel couldn't keep up the silly search among a half-dozen sofa-pillows and one canoe indefinitely. She must go back along the pier and pass between the rustic seats with Richard Grosvenor beside her, in a minute or two. Would she tell him now—immediately, that the "awful dame" was her mother?

"Well, I guess my watch isn't here, after all," she said with a catch in her voice, with almost a sob. It was over—all over. And so unbeautifully, so hideously.

"If the watch isn't here, it's probably up at Stag Island. If we both paddle hard, we can be there before dark. Jump in, we'll find it."

Laurel gave Richard a look that was like that of a dog to the god who releases his foot from the jaws of a steel trap. "Oh, you are good!" And she jumped into her place in the front of the canoe, he jumped in behind, and they were off, out of sight, out of sound, in three minutes.

They didn't find the watch. They hunted until it was dark on Stag Island and paddled back by the light of a slowly rising July moon. They hardly talked at all. Richard was aware of a high current of feeling that seemed to be coursing through this