Dog-days had come, and on one of the days when the dogstar rose and set most persistently with the sun Miss Gastonguay was strolling toward the avenue gates.
The day had been too hot to walk, too hot to ride. Now at approaching evening she felt restless, and looking searchingly at the road wished that Derrice or her now frequent visitor, Captain White, would come to see her.
Their well-known figures were not in sight. Only a young man on a bicycle was coming down the road. He was barely moving, and, with a thought of the heat of the evening, Miss Gastonguay murmured a listless, "Simpleton."
He was the first bicyclist that she had seen for three days and, as he drew near, she examined him curiously.
There was something familiar about his appearance, yet for a few minutes she was puzzled. Where had she seen before the straight figure in the smart knickerbocker suit,—a figure so straight and so lean that in a girl it would be called "willowy."
Ah, she knew now. The pale face, too pale for a habitual bicyclist, gave her the needed suggestion.
"Young man, your way lies there," she said, pointing to the road when he dismounted and approached her, cap in hand.
"Not for a minute, if you please," he said, taking a small piece of paper from his pocket.
She refused to touch it, until he said, impatiently, "It's a message from your brother. He's dying, and I haven't time to make hay."
She took it at this, but returned it immediately. "Have I eyes like microscopes that I can read these scraggy lines? Why didn't he send me a proper letter?"