"Yes, of course," he answered, "but think how soon you'll see her in Lockhaven;" and then he tried to make her talk of the lumber town, and the people, and John Ward. But he had the conversation quite to himself. At last, with a desperate desire to find something in which she would be interested, he said, "You must miss your friends very much. I'm sorry they are gone." "My friends?" "Yes, Mr. Forsythe--and his mother." "Oh, no!" she answered quickly. "No?" Gifford said, wondering if she were afraid he had discovered her secret, and hastening to help her conceal it. "Oh, of course you feel that the change will be good for Mrs. Forsythe?" "Oh, I hope it will!" cried Lois, fear trembling in the earnestness of her voice. Gifford had stepped over the low box border to a stately bunch of milk-white phlox. "Let's have some of this," he said, beginning to cut the long stems close to the roots; "it always looks so well in the blue jug." His back was toward her, and perhaps that gave him the courage to say, with a suddenness that surprised himself, "Ah--does Mrs. Forsythe go abroad with her son?" Even as he spoke he wondered why he had said it; certainly it was from no interest in the sick lady. Was it because he hoped to betray Lois into some expression of opinion concerning Mr. Forsythe's departure? He despised himself if it were a test, but he did not stop to follow the windings of his own motives. "Abroad?" Lois said, in a quick, breathless way. "Does he go abroad?" Gifford felt her excitement and suspense without seeing it, and he began to clip the phlox with a recklessness which would have wrung Dr. Howe's soul. "I--I believe so. I supposed you knew it." "How do you know it?" she demanded. "He told me," Gifford admitted. "Are you sure?" she said in a quavering voice. Gifford had turned, and was stepping carefully back among the plants, sinking at every step into the soft fresh earth. He did not look at her, as he reached the path. "Are you sure?" she said again. "Yes," he answered reluctantly, "yes, he is going; I don't know about his mother." Here, to his dismay, he saw the color come and go on Lois's sad little face, and her lip tremble, and her eyes fill, and then, dropping her roses, she began to cry heartily. "Oh, Lois!" he exclaimed, aghast, and was at her side in a moment. But she turned away, and, throwing her arm about an old locust-tree in the path, laid her cheek against the rough bark, and hid her eyes. "Oh, don't cry, Lois," he besought her. "What a brute I was to have told you in that abrupt way! Don't cry." "Oh, no," she said, "no, no, no! you must not say that--you--you do not understand"-- "Don't," he said tenderly, "don't--Lois!" Lois put one hand softly on his arm, but she kept her face covered. Gifford was greatly distressed. "I ought not to have told you in that way,"--Lois shook her head,--"and--and I have no doubt he--they'll come to Ashurst and tell you of their plans before they start."