She put her hand down to her belt. Her fingers touched something which rustled. She had thrust her cousin's letter into her belt. She now drew it out, and read it again. She read it as if it were written in a foreign language, and as if she were translating it word by word. CHAPTER II. A SLIGHT ACCIDENT. When it is summer-time, and you are engaged to the most perfect man in the world, and you are at a lovely seaside cottage with him, and are boating, and playing tennis, and trying to play golf, and cycling, and it is a little too early for any of all those people who are going to visit you really to arrive,--when such conditions prevail, you don't expect time to drag. And time did not drag with Carolyn Ffolliott,--it flew. A week had gone when one day at breakfast Mrs. Ffolliott remarked that she had almost a good mind to worry. Her daughter looked at her questioningly, and Leander, with his mouth full, said that "Marmer'd rather give a dollar any time than miss a worry." But marmer took no notice of her son; she continued to gaze at Carolyn, with her brows wrinkled. "Prudence, you know," she went on. "She said she might come any minute." "I suppose she changed her mind." "Perhaps. But I've been dreaming about her; I thought she was drowned, and when I told you, Caro, you laughed, and said it was a good thing. I was so shocked I--but, good heavens! Caro, what makes you look like that?" "Like what?" "Why, just as you did in my dream,--that same light in your eyes--" "Mamma!" broke in the girl, angrily. But she did not say anything more. At that moment a servant came into the room with a salver in her hand, and on the salver lay a yellow telegraph envelope. Carolyn half rose from the table, then she sat down, for she saw the servant was coming to her. To these people a telegram was little different from an ordinary note. Everybody telegraphed about everything. Notwithstanding this, the girl could not keep her hand quite steady as she tore open the cover. Her mother watched her face; she was still thinking of her dream. Immediately Carolyn began to smile. She read aloud: "Please send your wheel over to station for 11.40 train. "PRUDENCE FFOLLIOTT." The elder woman stirred her coffee desperately. "She isn't drowned, then," she said. "Apparently not, since she wants my wheel." "Shall you send it?" "Yes." "Sha'n't you drive over to meet her?" "No." "Well," said the elder lady, forcibly, "I call it ridiculous, coming home from Europe on a bicycle! I don't see when she learned, either. I thought she had been giving her mother mud baths, and all that sort of thing, and being devoted and--and what not." "As for that," responded Carolyn, "I don't know but Prue would be able to learn to ride a wheel in a mud bath itself." "Bully for Prue!" cried Leander. "My son!" said his mother, at which he grinned, but kindly refrained from repeating the remark.