and faced the crowd.  A sea of faces; some eager, some sullen, some frowning, all impatient.  The scraps of merry talk which had floated to her at intervals during the earlier stages of the waiting were no longer heard.  A gloomy silence seemed to have settled down upon every one.  Suddenly a laugh rang out upon the keen air,—­so full of a clear joyousness that people involuntarily straightened their drooping shoulders, as if inspired with a new sense of vigor and smiled in sympathy.

Evadne started.  Surely she had heard that voice before!  It must be,—­yes, it was,—­her knight of the gate!  Their eyes met.  A great light swept over his face and he lifted his hat.  Then the surging crowd carried him out of her range of vision.

“I don’t see what you find to look so pleased about, Evadne,” grumbled Isabelle, as they drove homeward.  “For my part I think the whole thing was a fizzle.”

“I was thinking,” said Evadne slowly, “of the power of a laugh.”

“The power of a laugh!  What in the World do you mean?”

“I mean that it is a great deal better for ourselves to laugh than to cry, and vastly more comfortable for our neighbors.”

“Evadne will not be down,” announced Marion the next morning as she entered the breakfast room.  “She caught a dreadful cold at the concert yesterday and she can’t lift her head from the pillow.  Celestine thinks she is sickening for a fever.”

“Dear me, how tiresome!” exclaimed Mrs. Hildreth.  “I have such a horror of having sickness in the house,—­one never knows where it will end.  Ring the bell for Sarah, Marion, to take up her breakfast.”

“It is no use, Mamma.  She says she does not want anything.”

“But that is nonsense.  The child must eat.  If it is fever, she will need a nurse, and nurses always make such an upheaval in a house.”

“You had better go up, my dear, and see for yourself,” said Judge Hildreth.  “Celestine may be mistaken.”

“Mercy!” cried Isabelle, “it is to be hoped she is!  I have the most abject horror of fevers and that is enough to make me catch it.  Fancy having one’s head shorn like a convict!  The very idea is appalling.”

“Oh, of course if there is the slightest danger, you and Marion will have to go to Madame Castle’s to board,” said her mother.  “It is very provoking that Evadne should have chosen to be sick just now.”

“Not likely the poor girl had much choice in the matter,” laughed Louis.  “There are a few things, lady mother, over which the best of us have no control.”

“I wish you would go up and see the child, Kate,” said Judge Hildreth impatiently.  “If there is the least fear of anything serious I will send the carriage at once for Doctor Russe.  It is a risky business transplanting tropical flowers into our cold climate.”

The kind-hearted French maid was bending over Evadne’s pillow when Mrs. Hildreth entered the room.  She had grown to love the quiet stranger whose courtesy made her work seem light, and it was with genuine regret that she whispered to her mistress,—­“It is the feevar.  I know it well.  My seestar had it and died.”