“Why not consult me now?” Tom asked; and Rex replied, “It will take too long and involves too much, and I must feel surer of myself than I do now. The fact is this hot weather or something is affecting my head, which feels at times as if there was a hornet’s nest in it, and I get so hot and then so cold. I believe it is malarious here. Anyhow, I do not feel like myself. I do not seem to have any courage or life left in me.” Tom looked at him and saw what he had not before noticed, that he did look very worn and tired. “It’s that confounded will,” he thought, “and the sooner he gets it off his mind the better. I’ll hurry back and have it out with him. There is not time now.” At this point Mr. McPherson was heard in the hall, asking if Rex were going to the station with Tom, in which case he would order the carriage; otherwise he would send Nixon with the buggy. “I’m going, yes. The drive will do me good,” Rex answered; and Irene saw the McPherson carriage go by with Tom and Rex in it, both lifting their hats to Rena, who was upon the piazza, and Tom kissing his hand to her as he looked back. Half an hour later the carriage stopped at the gate while Rex alighted, and, after saying a few words to Nixon, who nodded and drove on, he came up the walk and rang the bell, asking for Miss Burdick. CHAPTER XIII REX AND IRENE Rex was in a bad way mentally and physically. The hot weather was telling upon a constitution never very strong, and every day he felt a recurrence of the pain in his head which he likened to a hornet’s nest, and the trouble was intensified by thoughts of the will and what he ought to do. “I’ll speak to her about it to-day,” he said to himself, when returning from the station after bidding Tom good-by. “I ought to have done so at once and found out her opinion of it, and should, if it had not been for my wretched shyness and—and—Rena.” He said the name hesitatingly, with a feeling that always between him and Irene there had been a thought of Rena. Now, however, when he knew absolutely that the latter was engaged his thoughts turned to Irene, and he could remember the expression of the white frightened face in the water, and the voice which called to him, “Rex, save me!” as the blonde head was going down. The look and voice had appealed to him strangely, awakening a throb of something he had never felt before for her. She had claimed his protection and in so doing had in a way claimed him, and he would be a dastard to pay no attention to her. “Yes, I’ll call and see her and speak of the will. I guess I have made up my mind to accept it if she can,” he said, as Mrs. Parks’ house came in view. “Perhaps with no Rena in the foreground and no Tom to depend upon I shall get on better.”