“Quite easily,” I replied.  “I came on Sunday, and Tardif fetched me in his own boat.  If the weather had permitted, I should have paid you a call; but you know what it has been.”

“To be sure,” answered Emma; “and how is dear Julia?  She will be very anxious about you.”

“She was on the verge of a bilious attack when I left her,” I said; “that will tend to increase her anxiety.”

“Poor, dear girl,” she replied, sympathetically.  “But, Martin, is this young woman here so very ill?  We have heard from the Renoufs she had had a dangerous fall.  To think of your being in Sark ever since Sunday, and we never heard a word of it!”

No, thanks to Tardif’s quiet tongue, and Mother Renouf’s assiduous attendance upon mam’zelle, my sojourn in the island had been kept a secret; now that was at an end.

“Is that the young woman’s hair?” asked Emma, as Tardif gathered together the scattered tresses and tied them up quickly in a little white handkerchief, out of their sight and mine.  I saw them again afterward.  The handkerchief had been his wife’s—­white, with a border of pink roses.

“Yes,” I replied to her question, “it was necessary to cut it off.  She is dangerously ill with fever.”

Both of them shrank a little toward the door.  A sudden temptation assailed me, and took me so much by surprise that I had yielded before I knew I was attacked.  It was their shrinking movement that did it.  My answer was almost as automatic and involuntary as their retreat.

“You see it would not be wise for any of us to go about,” I said.  “A fever breaking out in the island, especially now you have no resident doctor, would be very serious.  I think it will be best to isolate this case till we see the nature of the fever.  You will do me a favor by warning the people away from us at present.  The storm has saved us so far, but now we must take other precautions.”

This I said with a grave tone and face, knowing all the while that there was no fear whatever for the people of Sark.  Was there a propensity in me, not hitherto developed, to make the worst of a case?

“Good-by, Martin, good-by,” cried Emma, backing out through the open door.  “Come away, Maria.  We have run no risk yet, Martin, have we?  Do not come any nearer to us.  We have touched nothing, except shaking hands with you.  Are we quite safe?”

“Is the young woman so very ill?” inquired Maria from a safe distance outside the house.

I shook my head in silence, and pointed to the door of the inner room, intimating to them that she was no farther away than there.  An expression of horror came over both their faces.  Scarcely waiting to bestow upon me a gesture of farewell, they fled, and I saw them hurrying with unusual rapidity across the fold.