"I heard you found a ring," he said.
The boy puckered his face, and gazed up at the face above him.
"You bet," he replied at last. "Prove property and pay for this advertisement, and—fork over the fifty dollars,—that is, if you want her."
At this stage in the conversation, Leander's sister escaped to her own room, where she sat for a long time by the window, looking off on the bay.
Below she heard the murmur of voices, the shrill tones of her brother, and the deeper tones of Rodney.
She put her hand down to her belt. Her fingers touched something which rustled. She had thrust her cousin's letter into her belt. She now drew it out, and read it again. She read it as if it were written in a foreign language, and as if she were translating it word by word.
CHAPTER II.
A SLIGHT ACCIDENT.
When it is summer-time, and you are engaged to the most perfect man in the world, and you are at a lovely seaside cottage with him, and are boating, and playing tennis, and trying to play golf, and cycling, and it is a little too early for any of all those people who are going to visit you really to arrive,—when such conditions prevail, you don't expect time to drag.
And time did not drag with Carolyn Ffolliott,—it flew.