about to say more, but she did not.

He waited, and then he said, "You can tell Mrs. Maynard that I
telegraphed on my own responsibility, if you think it's going to alarm
her."

"Well," said Grace, with a helpless sigh.

"You don't like to tell her that," he suggested, after a moment, in which
he had watched her.

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I know. And some day I will tell you how--if you will let me."

It seemed a question; and she did not know what it was that kept
her--silent and breathless and hot in the throat. "I don't like to do
it," she said at last. "I hate myself whenever I have to feign anything.
I knew perfectly well that you did n't say she was young," she broke out
desperately.

"Say Mrs. Maynard was young?" he asked stupidly.

"No!" she cried. She rose hastily from the bench where she had been
sitting with him. "I must go back to her now."

He mounted to his buggy, and drove thoughtfully away at a walk.

The ladies, whose excited sympathies for Mrs. Maynard had kept them from
the beach till now, watched him quite out of sight before they began to