That evening Keith called at The Lawns.  He did not take with him a placid spirit.  Mrs. Nailor’s shaft had gone home, and it rankled.  He tried to assure himself that what people were thinking had nothing to do with him.  But suppose Miss Abigail took this view of the matter?  He determined to ascertain.  One solution of the difficulty lay plain before him:  he could go away.  Another presented itself, but it was preposterous.  Of all the women he knew Lois Huntington was the least affected by him in the way that flatters a man.  She liked him, he knew; but if he could read women at all, and he thought he could, she liked him only as a friend, and had not a particle of sentiment about him.  He was easy, then, as to the point Mrs. Nailor had raised; but had he the right to subject Lois to gossip?  This was the main thing that troubled him.  He was half angry with himself that it kept rising in his mind.  He determined to find out what her aunt thought of it, and decided that he could let that direct his course.  This salved his conscience.  Once or twice the question dimly presented itself whether it were possible that Lois could care for him.  He banished it resolutely.

When he reached The Lawns, he found that Miss Abigail was sick, so the virtuous plan he had formed fell through.  He was trying to fancy himself sorry; but when Lois came out on the verandah in dainty blue gown which fell softly about her girlish figure, and seated herself with unconscious grace in the easy-chair he pushed up for her, he knew that he was glad to have her all to himself.  They fell to talking about her aunt.

“I am dreadfully uneasy about her,” the girl said.  “Once or twice of late she has had something like fainting spells, and the last one was very alarming.  You don’t know what she has been to me.”  She looked up at him with a silent appeal for sympathy which made his heart beat.  “She is the only mother I ever knew, and she is all I have in the world.”  Her voice faltered, and she turned away her head.  A tear stole down her cheek and dropped in her lap.  “I am so glad you like each other.  I hear you are engaged,” she said suddenly.

He was startled; it chimed in so with the thought in his mind at the moment.

“No, I am not; but I would like to be.”

He came near saying a great deal more; but the girl’s eyes were fixed on him so innocently that he for a moment hesitated.  He felt it would be folly, if not sacrilege, to go further.

Just then there was a step on the walk, and the young man Keith had seen, Dr. Locaman, came up the steps.  He was a handsome man, stout, well dressed, and well satisfied.

Keith could have consigned him and all his class to a distant and torrid clime.

He came up the steps cheerily and began talking at once.  He was so glad to see Keith, and had he heard lately from Dr. Balsam?—­“such a fine type of the old country doctor,” etc.