tor; it was an ever-fresh
amusement to him to realize that his large, long, muscular self was
committed to the care of that "pottering little man." The Doctor was not
in the least "pottering." But Lanse really thought that all short men
with small hands, who were without an active taste for guns, were of
that description. The sad Doctor made but a brief visit this time; then
he started homeward. He had still the news about Garda to tell in
Gracias. At present it was known only to ma.

Garda did not comply with the wish of her friends, and return to them.
She wrote a dozen letters about it, but in actual presence she remained
away. Most of these epistles were to Margaret. As time went on she wrote
to Margaret every day.

But her letters were not letters at all, in the usual sense of the word;
they were brief diaries, rapidly jotted down, of the feelings of the
moment; they were paeans, rhapsodies, bubbling exclamations of delight;
none of them ever exceeded in length a page.

They seemed to Margaret very expressive. She did not know what Garda
might be writing to the Kirbys, the Moores, and Mrs. Carew; but what
Garda wrote to her she kept to herself.

This was the girl's first letter after Margaret's note urging her to
return:

"Margaret, I _can't_ come--don't ask me; for none of them there
would sympathize with me--not even you. It isn't that I want
sympathy--I never even think of it. But I don't want the least
disagreeable thing now when I am so _blissful_--bliss is the only
word. Lucian comes in every morning on the train. The Doctor said
that of course he would not stay all the time in Charleston. So to
satisfy him Lucian stays four miles out.

"Oh, Margaret, everything is so enchanting!

"GARDA."

"DEAR MARGARET,--Every morning I watch until he opens the gate"
(she wrote a day later), "and then I run down to meet him in the
hall. We don't stay in the house, we go into the garden. Mrs.
Lowndes says she loves to have him come, because he reminds her so
much of Mr. Lowndes--'Roger,' she calls him. And she says it makes
her young again in her heart to see us. And perhaps it does in her
heart, but the change hasn't reached the outside yet. I am
expecting him every minute, there he comes now.

"GARDA."

"DEAR MARGARET,--If I could stay with you, I would come back
to-morrow," she wrote in answer to a second lett