face, Winslow's own face had something in common with its sinister effect of immobility. He was thinking of Merry. And of Sally's summer in Paris. Together. The two of them. With romance rampant. Winslow knew all the witchery of old gardens and dim churches and gay little inns. And Merry sharing all that with Sally! The thing was not to be thought of. It seemed to him as he gazed at the Chinese lady as if she ought to see some way out of it. She was so inscrutably wise as she sat there among her blue butterflies.
Yet it was not the Chinese lady who found a way out for him. Fate took things into her hands, and kept Merry at home.
"I can't leave my uncle," he wrote to Carew. "At first he urged me to do it, and it seemed settled. But I have had a talk with the doctor and he gives little hopes of many months ahead for Uncle Buck. So I must stay here. It would be too unutterably selfish to go when he depends so much on me. I can't tell you how sorry I am. And I shall see as much as possible of you all before you sail."
Carew read Merry's letter at the luncheon table at Round Hill. Sally and her mother were there for the week-end, and when she heard what Merry had written, Sally's heart stopped beating.
It seemed to her a long time before she got her breath, and nobody, apparently was aware that anything was the matter. She heard her mother say; "Well, one man more or less won't make much difference."
Sally knew that her mother was glad that Merry wasn't going. Mrs. Hulburt had been much upset by
