He opened the door as he spoke and Evadne followed him into the hall.  She shivered, although a warm breath of heated air fanned her cheek.  The atmosphere was chilly.

Marion, hurried forward to greet her, followed more leisurely by Isabelle and her mother, who touched her lips lightly to her forehead.

“I hope you have had a pleasant journey, my dear, although you must find our climate rather stormy.  I think you might as well let the girls take you at once to your room and then we will have dinner.”

“Where is the Judge?” inquired Louis.

“Detained again at the office.  He has just telephoned not to wait for him.  He is killing himself with overwork.”

To Evadne the dinner seemed interminable and she found herself contrasting the stiff formality with the genial hospitality of her father’s table.  She saw again the softly lighted room with its open windows through which the flowers peeped, and heard his gay badinage and his low, sweet laugh.  Could she be the same Evadne, or was it all a dream?

Isabelle stood beside her as she began to prepare for the night.  She wished she would go away.  The burden of loneliness grew every moment more intolerable.  Suddenly she turned towards her cousin and cried in desperation,—­

“Can you tell me where I shall find Jesus Christ?”

Isabelle started.  “My goodness, Evadne, what a strange question!  You took my breath away.”

“Is it a strange question?” she asked wistfully.  “Everyone seems to think so, and yet—­my father said I was to make it the business of my life to find him.”

“Your father!” cried Isabelle.  “Why Uncle Lenox was an——­”

Instantly a pair of small hands were held like a vice against her lips.  Isabelle threw them off angrily.

“You are polite, I must say!  Is this a specimen of West Indian manners?”

“You were going to say something I could not hear,” said Evadne quietly, “there was nothing else to do.”

Isabelle left the room, and, returning, threw a book carelessly upon the table.  “You had better study that,” she said.  “It will answer your questions better than I can.”

“I told you she was a heathen!” she exclaimed, as she rejoined her mother in the sitting-room; “but I did not know that I should have to turn missionary the first night and give her a Bible!”

Upstairs Evadne buried her face among the pillows and the aching heart burst its bonds in one long quivering cry of pain.

“Dearest!”

CHAPTER IV.

A day full of light—­warm and brilliant.  The sun flooding the wide fields of timothy and clover and fresh young grain with glory; falling with a soft radiance upon the comfortable mansion of the master of Hollywood Farm, with its spacious barns and long stretches of stabling, and throwing loving glances among the leaves of its deep belt of woodland where the river sparkled and soft rugs of moss spread their rich luxuriance over an aesthetic carpet of resinous pine needles.