The Tale of a Candlestick

The friendship of Aunt Agatha and Mr. Poynter miraculously grew. Aunt Agatha, upon the following morning, took to wandering vaguely about the wooded shore and into Philip's camp, impelled by gracious concern for his health, which she insisted upon regarding as impaired, and by effusive gratitude for such trifling civilities as he had readily proffered the day before. From there she wandered vaguely back to her niece's camp fire in a chronic state of worry about Carl. Discontented, unfailing in her melancholy reminiscences of cannibalistic snakes and herons. Aunt Agatha 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.