so much
about you."

The address was frank and friendly, the aspect of the speaker
prepossessing. I strove to respond with suitable cordiality, and while
doing so a resolve flashed lightning-like through my mind. I was giving
myself away by dwelling too much on this direful change. Well, I would
not.

"Oh, I'm all jolly," I said, with forced carelessness. "Think I got a
touch of the sun yesterday. All right again now."

The while I was helping to extract the other occupants of the Cape
cart--first Iris, then Beryl. Her quick, solicitous glance as we
clasped hands was not lost on me, nor was the tact wherewith she
refrained from adding her comments upon my personal appearance. Then
George got himself out, looking very sobered and subdued, and quite
different to the impudent mischievous pup of so short a while back.

"Where's the dad?" said Brian, looking up from his outspanning. "He's
not seedy, too, is he?"

"Not a bit. He's down in the further land. Ah, here he comes. By
Jove, Brian, you've had rather a load," I went on, as I helped in the
extraction of numerous bundles, and in the casting loose of the luggage
lashed on behind. I must be doing something, I felt; talking too,
otherwise the contrast between this return as I had pictured it hardly
twenty-four hours ago and as it now was, would have been too forcibly
brought home. Then, even though others were by, I would have managed to
convey to Beryl what a delight her return had brought to, at any rate,
myself; now, we had met in ordinary conventional fashion, and she was
chatting with the stranger, while I chaffed Iris and tried to cheer up
that poor little devil, George.

The stranger aforesaid, whose name was Pentridge, was a well-set-up,
good-looking fellow of about my own age, a man to whom under other
circumstances I should have taken. But now it was easy to see that
Beryl occupied nearly, if not quite, as large a preponderance in his
thoughts as she did in mine. He was a doctor by profession, and an old
acquaintance of the Mattersons, though they had not met for some time.
Now, meeting him by chance in Fort Lamport, Beryl had invited him out to
the farm.

Here was a new element in the situation for which I had not bargained.
The said situation I had thought out again and again during the
twenty-four hours which had intervened since my first hearing the
abominable news, and notably during an almost sleepless night. I would
not say anythi