"I thank you; but I will continue my stroll. One gets so little fresh air indoors, and I have been so confined lately. To-day I am off duty, and making the most of it. My respects to the family."
"Oh!" she says, turning, with her foot on the marble step. "May I ask you one question?"
"A dozen, if you please," he returned, gallantly.
"It is only this: It is a current report here that the Hon. Mrs. Winans, who came down here with your party to help nurse the fever patients, is, or was, Miss Grace Grey of this city—do you know if this is true?" lifting eager, inquiring eyes to his face.
"Yes, it is certainly true," and she sees some sort of a change pass over his face—what, she cannot fathom.
"Indeed!" she says, in quick surprise and pleasure. "I knew her intimately as a child; we were next-door neighbors"—she nods at the handsome residence standing next to her own, and he looks at it with tender interest—"and afterward we were in boarding-school together. I always liked her so much. Will you give her Stella De Vere's love, and tell her I will come and see her if she will let me?"
"I certainly will, with pleasure," and they shake hands and say good-by again, and she runs up the steps of her father's stately home, pausing in the door-way as he turns away.
"He is a hero," she says, with a dreamy light in her dark eyes. "How I could love him, if——"
She shuts the door, half-sighing, and goes in.