"I heard something about you over there," she ventures. "One always has to go abroad to hear news from home, you know." "Very likely; you can hear anything you want to over there. Little Portsmouth is the hot bed of gossip," he answers, smiling dryly. "Well, for that matter, all places are," she returns. "But you do not ask what it was that I heard?" "Is it worth the repetition?" "I think so, but you are not interested, I see;" and she leans back with some displeasure--a pout on the curve of her crimson lip. He rouses himself, all penitence and forced gallantry. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Winans. Any remark from yourself cannot fail to be interesting." "I heard--I wonder you did not tell me of it yourself--that you and your mother are going next week to Memphis to help to nurse the fever patients." No answer. "Is this true?" Her eyes are seeking his. He looks down on her, answering constrainedly: "It is perfectly true, Mrs. Winans." "Why have you kept it from me?" in some wonder this. "We intended telling you, of course, before we left; but it is such a harrowing topic--the sufferings of those poor yellow fever patients--that I have hesitated in mentioning it to you." "Was that your only reason?" No answer. He cannot bear to speak. "I know," she resumes, "why you have not told me. You feared I would want to go, too, and so kept it from me in your good, true, brotherly love; but in this case," smiling willfully up into his disturbed face, "your painstaking has been 'Love's Labor Lost.' I have been making my mind up to go all along, and now I mean to make the trip there under the protection of your mother and yourself--if you will permit me." The murder is out. She looks away from him demurely, waiting his reply. It comes, full of a shocked horror. "Mrs. Winans, are you mad?" "Not at all; are you? I am quite as strong, quite as able to help those poor sufferers, as your mother is; and yet you do not think she is mad," she answers, half offended. "No; for she has had the fever, and so have I. You have heard of the fever that desolated Norfolk and Portsmouth in 1855? Mother and I both had the _yellow fever_ in its worst form then, so you see it is perfectly safe and our bounden duty for us to go to the relief of those poor sufferers. But you are frail and delicate yourself. You have never had the fever; you are not acclimated there, and would only fall a victim. It would be a sort of disguised suicide, for you would be voluntarily rushing into the jaws of death."