that he was not properly attending
to what she said. Aurora's monogram, daintily executed, adorned the
door-panels of her carriage.

"Yes," she answered. "Why?"

As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked,
again irrelevantly:

"How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this afternoon?"

"She was going to a different tea-party." Supposing that his question
was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to talk
of her.

"She was going to her French teacher's, who is having a French afternoon
where they're supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I have
been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language
exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I've wanted to
tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more
her dog than mine, don't you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle
loves him more than I do. That's all there is about it. Which isn't
saying that I don't love him. But Estelle's silly over him, in the
regular old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn't eat his dinner
this noon, I had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so
troubled. And nothing ailed him, I guess, but that he'd picked up
something in the kitchen. What I wanted to say was, don't you think it's
because I don't value your present, if you should notice by and by that
I seem to have given up my claims to Busteretto. That sort of alive
present has a will of its own. The little thing took to her from the
first more than he did to me. Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be
remembered?"

"Pray do."

"She'll be sorry to hear you're sick. Don't say that again, Gerald," she
silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly appear. "Don't tell me
you aren't sick, for I know better. It's been taking away my appetite to
see you make believe to eat, and choke over it. Your cough is so tight
it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give me your hand. It's as hot, dear
boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your pulse."

He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a
disposition to shiver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood.

He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she
counted the beats in his wrist.

"I'm going to stop at Doctor Gage's on my way home," she said, letting
go his hand, and not heeding what he said. "And I'm going to tell him to
come and see you."

"Please do not!