"Is the scarlet fever here, and are you afraid I'll take it?" he asked. "Did you hear anything else we said?" she inquired. "Not a word." "It has happened so unfortunately," now began the elder lady. "But what are we going to do?" "Mamma!" exclaimed Carolyn. The young man began to be puzzled. A line came between his eyes. "If you really want me to go--" he began. "No; mamma is silly, that's all," said Carolyn, frankly. "As if that were not enough!" Here Lawrence laughed, but the line did not leave his forehead. "You'll have to tell him now, mamma," said the girl, "or he will really think we don't want him." Mrs. Ffolliott hesitated. And as she hesitated a glitter grew quite decidedly in Lawrence's eyes. The Ffolliott home had always been his home, and though "Aunt Tishy" was not his aunt, but only a second cousin, she had been very kind to the boy whom she had persuaded her husband virtually to adopt when he had been left alone before he was ten years old. "Yes, you will certainly have to tell me," he said; and he drew himself up a little as he spoke. "I thought," he went on, "when I overheard you speak of sending me a message, that you were going away somewhere; but if it's not convenient for you to have me--" "Now it's you who are silly," Carolyn interrupted. "You see," said Mrs. Ffolliott, "we have just heard from Prudence." "Well?" Lawrence knew that Carolyn was carefully refraining from looking at him, and this knowledge keenly exasperated him. "I thought that--I didn't know but--" Having proceeded thus far, Mrs. Ffolliott paused. Lawrence laughed, not quite pleasantly. "You thought that if a man was once a fool he was always a fool?" he asked. "I don't know, I'm sure," the lady answered, helplessly. "Caro, you tell him." "One would think you were going to cut off an arm or a leg," he said. "It's all quite ridiculous," the girl began. "Prudence writes that she is tired of staying abroad, and she is coming here. What she says is that she may 'alight at Savin Hill at any moment.'" Lawrence walked to one of the piazza pillars, and leaned against it. "I suppose I must have been even more of a raving maniac about Prudence Ffolliott than I knew, and I knew I was the most infernal idiot that ever walked on the face of the globe," he said, looking at Carolyn. "At least I came to know it, you understand. But a man gets over a lot of things. You'll find there won't be a bit of melodrama or anything of the sort. You'll have to let me stay, if that's all you've got against my staying." Here the speaker laughed gaily. "That's so nice, I'm sure," said the elder lady, comfortably; "and now we won't think anything more about it." But Lawrence did not seem to hear her. He was still gazing, somewhat markedly, at the girl, who smiled a little constrainedly at him, as she said: "It's very odd, but Leander has just found that ring that Prue gave you, and that you lost so unaccountably."