ll at the window, Rownie brought
her a note from Bennett, sent by special messenger.

"Ferriss woke up sick this morning. Nobody here but the two of us;
can't leave him alone. BENNETT."

"Oh!" exclaimed Lloyd Searight a little blankly.

The robin and his effrontery at once ceased to be amusing. She closed
the window abruptly, shutting out the summer morning's gayety and charm,
turning her back upon the sunlight.

Now she was more in the humour of reading. On the great divan against
the wall lay the month's magazines and two illustrated weeklies. Lloyd
had bought them to read on the train. But now she settled herself upon
the divan and, picking up one of the weeklies, turned its leaves
listlessly. All at once she came upon two pictures admirably reproduced
from photographs, and serving as illustrations to the weekly's main
article--"The Two Leaders of the Freja Expedition." One was a picture of
Bennett, the other of Ferriss.

The suddenness with which she had come upon his likeness almost took
Lloyd's breath from her. It was the last thing she had expected. If he
himself had abruptly entered the room in person she could hardly have
been more surprised. Her heart gave a great leap, the dull crimson of
her cheeks shot to her forehead. Then, with a charming movement, at once
impulsive and shamefaced, smiling the while, her eyes half-closing, she
laid her cheek upon the picture, murmuring to herself words that only
herself should hear. The next day she left for the country.

On that same day when Dr. Pitts arrived at the rooms Ferriss and Bennett
had taken he found the anteroom already crowded with visitors--a knot of
interviewers, the manager of a lecture bureau, as well as the agent of a
patented cereal (who sought the man of the hour for an endorsement of
his article), and two female reporters.

Decidedly Richard Ferriss was ill; there could be no doubt about that.
Bennett had not slept the night before, but had gone to and fro about
the rooms tending to his wants with a solicitude and a gentleness that
in a man so harsh and so toughly fibred seemed strangely out of place.
Bennett was far from well himself. The terrible milling which he had
undergone had told even upon that enormous frame, but his own ailments
were promptly ignored now that Ferriss, the man of all men to him, was
"down."

"I didn't pull through with you, old man," he responded to all of
Ferriss's protests, "to have you get sick on my hands at thi