m him,
put them into the little basket on her arm.

"How I miss Helen!" she said at last.

"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
s