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.
When she awoke, with a nervous start, Johnny was down at the edge of
the lake scouring pans with sand and whistling blithely.
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