She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight
of the greater part of the water without a sight of the child.
There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank
where my observation of her had been most startling,
and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin
of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water.
The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared
to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have
been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse,
and then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes.
I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake.
"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat."
My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across
the lake. "Then where is it?"
"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go over,
and then has managed to hide it."
"All alone--that child?"
"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's an old,
old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again,
into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission;
then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge
formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked,
for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees
growing close to the water.
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