his own boat. If the weather had permitted, I should have paid you a
call; but you know what it has been."

"To be sure," answered Emma; "and how is dear Julia? She will be very
anxious about you."

"She was on the verge of a bilious attack when I left her," I said;
"that will tend to increase her anxiety."

"Poor, dear girl," she replied, sympathetically. "But, Martin, is this
young woman here so very ill? We have heard from the Renoufs she had had
a dangerous fall. To think of your being in Sark ever since Sunday, and
we never heard a word of it!"

No, thanks to Tardif's quiet tongue, and Mother Renouf's assiduous
attendance upon mam'zelle, my sojourn in the island had been kept a
secret; now that was at an end.

"Is that the young woman's hair?" asked Emma, as Tardif gathered
together the scattered tresses and tied them up quickly in a little
white handkerchief, out of their sight and mine. I saw them again
afterward. The handkerchief had been his wife's--white, with a border of
pink roses.

"Yes," I replied to her question, "it was necessary to cut it off. She
is dangerously ill with fever."

Both of them shrank a little toward the door. A sudden temptation
assailed me, and took me so much by surprise that I had yielded before I
knew I was attacked. It was their shrinking movement that did it. My