The pocketbook lay on the floor. He would have handed it to her, but she motioned for him to give it to her husband. Ravenel drew from it three bank-notes, saying, as he passed them to John--"Better engage two berths, but buy only one ticket. Then we can either----" March, busy with his own pocketbook, made a sign that he understood. His fingers trembled, but when he lifted his eyes from them there was a solemn calm in his face and his jaws were set like steel. He handed back one of the notes, and with it something else which was neither coin nor currency. "Does this mean----" quietly began Ravenel. "Yes," said John, "I sell you my ticket. I shan't leave town till Miss Fannie's fit to travel." "Why, John!" For a single instant the sick man reddened. In the next he had recovered his old serenity. "Why that's powerful kind of you." "Oh, no," said March, with a boyish smile to Fannie, who was rising to move to a lounge, "it's a mighty old----" He was going to say "debt," but before Ravenel could more than catch his breath or John start half a step forward she had struck the lounge like a flail. March sprang to her, snatched up a glass of water, and seeing Ravenel's hand on the bell-pull at the bed's head cried, "Ring for the maid, why don't you? She's fainted away." "Keep cool, old man," said the bridegroom, with his quiet gaze on Fannie. Her eyes opened, and he withdrew his hand. * * * * * At seven that evening Ravenel, sitting in his sleeping-car seat, gave March his hand for good-by. "Yes," said John, "and if the nurse I've got her isn't tip-top--George! I'll find one that is!" "I'll trust you for that, John." But John frowned. "What right have you got to trust me this way at all?" "Because, old man, this time you're in love with another girl." "No, sir! No, sir!" said March, backing away as the train began to move. "Don't you fool yourself with _that_ notion." "I shan't," drawled the departing traveler. LXIII. LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS No one ever undertook to argue anything with Ravenel unless invited to do so, and very few ever got such an invitation. Fannie had not intended to be left behind. Out of her new care of him she had made her first and last effort to bend his will to hers, and even while she burned under the grief and shame of his treatment she would have gone with him at his beckon though death threatened her at every step. At any rate so she felt as she came out of her faint and bravely resumed her care of him, retaining it even when the doctor declared she had a fever and ought to be in bed. But she felt also that Jeff-Jack knew he had only to beckon; and when he did not do so, either by hand or tone, she saved herself the idle torture of asking him to take a sick bride on a journey from which a sick bride could not deter him.