“Oh, I did not expect--I did not think”--she stammered. He had never seen Helen Carruth disconcerted. But she blushed like a schoolgirl when she gave him, saxifrage and all, her ungloved hand. XI. “Mother sent me!--I came down for her and father!” began Helen Carruth abruptly. Then she thought how that sounded--as if she need be supposed to apologize for or explain the circumstance that she happened to find one of her father’s old students sunning himself upon a given portion of the New England coast; and she blushed again. When she saw the sudden, upward motion of Bayard’s heavy eyelids, she could have set her pretty teeth through her tongue, for vexation at her little _faux pas_. From sheer embarrassment, she laughed it off. “I haven’t heard anybody laugh like that since I came to Windover,” said Bayard, drawing a long breath. “Do give me an encore!” “Now, then, you are laughing at me!” “Upon the word of a poor heretic parson--no. You can’t think how it sounds. It sinks in--like the sun.” “But I don’t feel like laughing any more. I’ve got all over it. I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.” “Why not? You used to be good-natured, I thought--in Cesarea, ages ago.” “You are enough to drive the laugh out of a faun,” said the young lady soberly. “Pray sit down again on your sand sofa. I did not know you had been so ill. Put on your hat, Mr. Bayard. Good society does not require ghosts to stand bareheaded at the seacoast in April.” “I don’t move in good society any longer. I am not expected to know anything about its customs. Sit down beside me, a minute--and I will. No--stay. Perhaps you will take cold? I wish I had some wraps. My coat”-- “When _I_ take _your_ coat”--began the healthy girl. He had already flung his overcoat upon the dry, warm sand. She gave it back to him. Then she saw the color start into his pale face. “Oh, forgive me!” she said quickly. “I did not mean--Mr. Bayard, I never was ill in my life.” “Nor I, either, before now,” pleaded Bayard rather piteously. “Who called it the ‘insolence of health’? I did not mean to be impertinent, if you will take the trouble to believe me. I fail to grasp the situation, that’s all. I am simply obtuse--blunt--blunt as a clam.” She waved her sun-umbrella dejectedly towards the beach where a solitary clam-digger, a bent, picturesque old man, was seeking his next chowder. “The amount of it is,” said Miss Carruth more in her usual manner, “that I was taken a little by surprise. You used to look so--different. You are greatly changed, Mr. Bayard. Being a heretic does not agree with you.” “I have had a little touch of something they call pneumonia down here,” observed Bayard carelessly. “I’ve been out only a few days.”