Myers started up to pursue him, but Mr. Gordon held up his hand.

"Let him go!" he said, sternly. "It may be that he carries his
punishment with him. In any case we shall see him no more."

Quickly and quietly he gave Myers his orders; to take Lena Laxen to
her home, notify the physician, and proclaim a strict quarantine; to
burn the infected rags without loss of time; to have every part of
the shed where the fatal bag had stood thoroughly disinfected. When
the man had hastened away, Mr. Gordon turned to Mary, and his stern
face lightened.

"Do not distress yourself, Mary," he said, kindly. "It may be that
Lena will escape the infection; it seems that she only had the
garment on a few minutes; and you did all you could, I am sure, to
dissuade her from this piece of fatal and dishonest folly."

"Oh! I might have said more!" cried Mary, in an agony of
self-reproach. "I meant to go into her house this morning, and try
to make her hear reason; it might not have been too late then."

"Thank Heaven you did not!" said Mr. Gordon, gravely. "The air of
the house was probably already infected. No one save the doctor must
go near that house till all danger of the disease developing is over."

He then told Mary briefly why he had sent for her. Finding that he
could not go to Boston himself at present, as he had planned, he had
sent the brooch by express to a jeweller whom he knew, and would be
able to tell her in a few days whether it was of real value or not.
Mary thanked him, but his words fell almost unheeded on her ears.