"And there's been no explanation, of any sort?"
"Not the slightest. I'd give half I'm worth if I could get a clue. It worries me all the time. A life like that girl's ruined—simply ruined—in twenty-four hours, and nobody able to tell why! It's enough to drive a man frantic!"
Mr. Weil did not drive immediately to Oakhurst, which he learned was the name of the estate that Mr. Fern rented, but he enclosed his card in a hotel envelope and sent it there by mail, without a word of comment. If they thought it best to see him he would be glad to go, otherwise he would not intrude on their privacy.
Several days after—mails were slow in the South—an answer came. It briefly requested that Mr. Weil and Mr. Boggs, if the latter were still in town, would come to lunch on the following Wednesday. Boggs fumed slightly at the apparent difference made between him and Weil, but ended by going with his friend to Oakhurst.
Mr. Fern did not look any worse than when Archie had last seen him—indeed, if anything, he had improved in appearance. Time helps most griefs to put on a better face, and though the marks of what he had passed through would not be likely to leave his countenance, the utter hopelessness had in a measure [disappeared]. When Daisy came into the parlor, she also wore a mien not quite so crushed as when she left the room at Midlands with her words of farewell. Whatever her trouble was, it had not left her without something to live for. Her youth was doing its work, and it seemed to the anxious eyes of the onlooker that time would restore her nearly, if not quite, to her former radiance.
In the presence of Mr. Boggs, neither father nor daughter cared to discuss the past. They talked of the plantation on which they resided, of the pleasant drives in the vicinity, and of matters connected with the world in general, of which they had learned through the newspapers. But after the lunch was finished Archie found himself alone with Daisy, wandering through the extensive oak forest that gave the place its name.
"How long shall you stay here?" he asked her, as a prelude to the other questions he wanted to follow it.
"I don't know," she replied. "We shall probably go north during the warm weather, perhaps to the White Mountains."
He suggested that it must be rather lonesome at Oakhurst.
"Not for us," she said, quickly. "We are all in all to each other, and require no thickly settled community to satisfy us."