ement that
launched the ball with unerring unexpectedness. And because she could
not speak without inadvertently lashing Corrie, she sat mute.

She did not know how long it was before he spoke, with the new steady
seriousness so strange to meet in him.

"Where are we getting to, Other Fellow? Because we have got to get
somewheres, you know; we don't stand still. Gerard will go away to his
own home, soon. You and father and Isabel and I can't just sit here
looking at each other, like we've been doing."

Gerard would go away, soon. That was the sentence that gripped Flavia.
Go, without seeing her, without pursuing the purpose he had shown her in
the fountain arbor? It seemed so impossible that the thrill that shook
her was not of fear, but of startled expectancy. Yet she answered
Corrie with scarcely a pause, and with all tenderness.

"Dear, Isabel will not be here, for a little while," she told him,
hesitatingly. "She is going South with Mrs. Alexander and Caroline. She,
she needs the change."

"That's good," he approved. "She will be better off, away from here, and
you will be better for her going. She worries us all with her fidgets."

Amazed, Flavia turned in her seat to regard him.

"Corrie!"

"You thought I would mind?" He smiled whimsically. "Flavia, I've had a
lot of nonsense knocked out of me. It took a bad shock to cure me of
Isabel, but I'm well. There's nothing left of that. In fact, I feel all
full of holes where ideas have been jolted out of me--I feel rather
empty."

The beautiful foreign motor car had stolen along the road so silently
that neither brother nor sister perceived its approach until the grind
of applied brakes sounded beside the stopped carriage.

"I should have supposed that there'd be views in the countryside more
pleasant to this family than that field," caustically observed Mr.
Rose. "You can take the machine on home, Lenoir; I'll drive with Miss
Rose."

He descended, the chauffeur stooping to open the door, while Corrie and
Flavia looked on, too much surprised to find reply.

"Keep your seat," he curtly ordered, as his son rose to yield the place
beside Flavia. "I'll get up here. Drive ahead, my girl."

He took the rear seat of the little carriage, resting his arm on the
cushioned back so that his strong, square-set head was between the two
who sat in front. The automobile obediently sped on, and only the beat
of the ponies' hoofs interrupted the chill afternoon hush for th