"I wonder too, Ted darling," she whispered. "The doctor says your youth and constitution saved you. I wonder if that explains all?"
"Perhaps there was something to help—your love and care," I smiled.
"Even something beyond that, Ted dear. You see, Prospero had no chance, the doctor said, because of his drinking and drug-taking."
"It must have been a shock to 'mother.'" I don't know why I hadn't thought of her before, or why I thought of her now. Helen laughed one of her "questing laughs," the happy kind that only I was privileged to hear.
"Poor mother! She telegraphed for Miss Hershey to come and chaperon me and went herself to Asheville until Christmas. To have a real invalid in the house was the last straw!"
"But Leonidas!" I cried. "The poor hound is shut up in my rooms."
"No, he isn't, Ted. Dad went for him. He is asleep in front of the fire downstairs."
"So you are in Miss Hershey's hands?"
"Yes, but she is wonderfully tame, Ted, now she knows about you."
"What a marvellous forty-eight hours it has been!" I said. "We set forth after the questing beast in the morning—and before two suns, find love and life and death, all very near one another and each of them lurking in the most unlikely places."