Some one laughed, and the suspicion that he had been hoaxed swept over
Blake.
"What's the joke?" he demanded. "I was frightened to death."
"The house is quarantined."
"I never dreamed you'd all come," Miss Warren was saying, sweetly.
"It was very gallant, and I shall never forget it—never."
"She says her—beauty is—gone," wildly panted Marigny, who had run himself blind and as yet could hear nothing but the drumming in his ears.
"Judge for yourself." Cline steadied him against the low iron fence and pointed to the girl's bewitching face embowered in the leafy window above.
From where he lay flat on his back, idly flapping his hands, Rilleau complained: "I have a weak heart. Will somebody get me a drink?"
"It was splendid of you," Myra Nell called down to the group. "I love you for it. Please get me out, right away."
Norvin now perceived a burly individual seated upon the steps of the La Branche mansion. He approached with a view to parleying, but the man forestalled him" saying warningly:
"You can't go in. They've got smallpox in there."