“She is not,” said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly, “and she never will be.  If you go about it right she will marry you.”  She added calmly:  “I hope she will, with all my heart.”

“Marry me!  Lois Huntington!  Why—­”

“She considers me her grandmother, perhaps; but not you her grandfather.  She thinks you are much too young for me.  She thinks you are the most wonderful and the best and most charming man in the world.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“I do not know where she got such an idea—­unless you told her so yourself,” she said, with a smile.

“I would like her to think it,” said Keith, smiling; “but I have studiously avoided divulging myself in my real and fatal character.”

“Then she must have got it from the only other person who knows you in your true character.”

“And that is—?”

She looked into his eyes with so amused and so friendly a light in her own that Keith lifted her hand to his lips.

“I do not deserve such friendship.”

“Yes, you do; you taught it to me.”

He sat back in his chair, trying to think.  But all he could think of was how immeasurably he was below both these women.

“Will you forgive me?” he said suddenly, almost miserably.  He meant to say more, but she rose, and at the moment he heard a step behind him.  He thought her hand touched his head for a second, and that he heard her answer, “Yes”; but he was not sure, for just then Mrs. Rhodes spoke to them, and they all three had to pretend that they thought nothing unusual had been going on.

They received their mail next day, and were all busy reading letters, when Mrs. Rhodes gave an exclamation of surprise.

“Oh, just hear this!  Little Miss Huntington’s old aunt is dead.”

There was an exclamation from every one.

“Yes,” she went on reading, with a faint little conventional tone of sympathy in her voice; “she died ten days ago—­very suddenly, of heart-disease.”

“Oh, poor little Lois!  I am so sorry for her!” It was Alice Lancaster’s voice.

But Keith did not hear any more.  His heart was aching, and he was back among the shrubbery of The Lawns.  All that he knew was that Rhodes and Mrs. Rhodes were expressing sympathy, and that Mrs. Lancaster, who had not said a word after the first exclamation, excused herself and left the saloon.  Keith made up his mind promptly.  He went up on deck.  Mrs. Lancaster was sitting alone far aft in the shadow.  Her back was toward him, and her hand was to her eyes.  He went up to her.  She did not look up; but Keith felt that she knew it was he.

“You must go to her,” she said.

“Yes,” said Keith.  “I shall.  I wish you would come.”

“Oh, I wish I could!  Poor little thing!” she sighed.

Two days after that Keith walked into the hotel at Brookford.  The clerk recognized him as he appeared, and greeted him cordially.  Something in Keith’s look or manner, perhaps, recalled his former association with the family at The Lawns, for, as Keith signed his name, he said: