oak?" was the question which was
repeatedly asked. For no cloak had been found on the sands, and it was
unlikely that she had worn it into the water. The disappearance of the
blue cloak was the only point which seemed to contradict the theory of
accidental drowning. There were those who held that the cloak might have
been carried off by some acquisitive individual. But it was not likely;
the islanders are, as a rule, honest, and it was too late in the season
for "off-islanders."

I am the only one who knows the truth. And as the truth would have been
harder for Anthony Peak to bear than what he believed had happened, I
have always withheld it.

There was, too, the fear that if I told they might try to bring Nancy
back. I think Anthony would have searched the world for her. Not,
perhaps, because of any great and passionate need of her, but because he
would have thought her unhappy in what she had done, and would have
sought to save her.

I am twenty years older than Nancy, her parents are dead, and it was at
my house that she always stayed when she came to Nantucket. She has
island blood in her veins, and so has Anthony Peak. Back of them were
seafaring folk, although in the foreground was a generation or two of
cosmopolitan residence. Nancy had been educated in France, and Anthony
in England. The Peaks and the Greers owned respectively houses in Beacon
Street and in Washington Square. They came every summer to the island,
and it was thus that Anthony and Nancy grew up together, and at last
became engaged.

As I have said, I am twenty years older than Nancy, and I am her cousin.
I live in the old Greer house on Orange Street, for it is mine by
inheritance, and was to have gone to Nancy at my death. But it will not
go to her now. Yet I sometimes wonder--will the ship which carried her
away ever sail back into the harbor? Some day, when she is old, will she
walk up the street and be sorry to find strangers in the house?

I remember distinctly the day when the yacht first anchored within the
Point. It was a Sunday morning and Nancy and I had climbed to the top of
the house to the Captain's Walk, the white-railed square on the roof
which gave a view of the harbor and of the sea.

Nancy was twenty-five, slim and graceful. She wore that morning a short
gray-velvet coat over white linen. Her thick brown hair was gathered
into a low knot and her fine white skin had a touch of artificial color.
Her eyes were a clear blue.