e wretched invalid interrupted."

Louise raised her clear eyes to his, without reproach, indignation, or
even wonder. He felt as if he had attempted an insult and failed.

"Does my cousin know you are going so soon?" she asked finally.

"No, I did not know myself until to-day. You see," he added hastily,
while his honest blood blazoned the lie in his cheek, "I've heard of
some miserable business affairs that will bring me back to England
sooner that I expected."

"I think you should consider your health more important than any mere
business," said Louise. "I don't mean that you should remain HERE," she
added with a hasty laugh, "but it would be a pity, now that you have
reaped the benefit of rest and taking care of yourself, that you should
not make it your only business to seek it elsewhere."

Mainwaring longed to say that within the last half hour, living or dying
had become of little moment to him; but he doubted the truth or efficacy
of this timeworn heroic of passion. He felt, too, that anything he said
was a mere subterfuge for the real reason of his sudden departure. And
how was he to question her as to that reason? In escaping from these
subterfuges--he was compelled to lie again. With an assumption of
changing the subject, he said calmly, "Richardson thought he had met you
before--in Menlo Park, I think."

Amazed at the evident irrelevance of the remark, Louise said coldly,
that she did not remember having seen him before.

"I think it was at a Mr. Johnson's--or WITH a Mr. Johnson--or perhaps at
one of those Spanish ranches--I think he mentioned some name like Pico!"

Louise looked at him wonderingly for an instant, and then gave way to
a frank, irrepressible laugh, which lent her delicate but rather set
little face all the color he had missed. Partially relieved by her
unconcern, and yet mortified that he had only provoked her sense of the
ludicrous, he tried to laugh also.

"Then, to be quite plain," said Louise, wiping her now humid eyes, "you
want me to understand that you really didn't pay sufficient attention
to hear correctly! Thank you; that's a pretty English compliment, I
suppose."

"I dare say you wouldn't call it 'philandering'?"

"I certainly shouldn't, for I don't know what 'philandering' means."

Mainwaring could not reply, with Richelieu, "You ought to know"; nor did
he dare explain what he thought it meant, and how he knew it. Louise,
however, innocently solved the difficulty.

"