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“An earthquake,” said the man, roughly, “and if it had lasted ten seconds longer it would have shook the whole shanty down and left you under it. Yer kin tell that to them, if they don’t know it, but from the way they made tracks to the fields, I reckon they did. They’re coming now.”

Without another word he turned away half surlily, half defiantly, passing scarce fifty yards away Mrs. Randolph and her daughter, who were hastening towards their guest.

“Oh, here you are!” said Mrs. Randolph, with the nearest approach to effusion that Rose had yet seen in her manner. “We were wondering where you had run to, and were getting quite concerned. Emile was looking for you everywhere.”

The recollection of his blank and abject face, his vague outcry and blind fright, came back to Rose with a shock that sent a flash of sympathetic shame to her face. The ingenious Adele noticed it, and dutifully pinched her mother’s arm.

“Emile?” echoed Rose faintly–“looking for ME?”

Mother and daughter exchanged glances.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Randolph, cheerfully, “he says he started to run with you, but you got ahead and slipped out of the garden door–or something of the kind,” she added, with the air of making light of Rose’s girlish fears. “You know one scarcely knows what one does at such times, and it must have been frightfully strange to YOU–and he’s been quite distracted, lest you should have wandered away. Adele, run and tell him Miss Mallory has been here under the oak all the time.”

Rose started–and then fell hopelessly back in her seat. Perhaps it WAS true! Perhaps he had not rushed off with that awful face and without a word. Perhaps she herself had been half-frightened out of her reason. In the simple, weak kindness of her nature it seemed less dreadful to believe that the fault was partly her own.

“And you went back into the house to look for us when all was over,” said Mrs. Randolph, fixing her black, beady, magnetic eyes on Rose, “and that stupid yokel Zake brought you out again. He needn’t have clutched your arm so closely, my dear,–I must speak to the major about his excessive familiarity–but I suppose I shall be told that that is American freedom. I call it ‘a liberty.'”

It struck Rose that she had not even thanked the man–in the same flash that she remembered something dreadful that he had said. She covered her face with her hands and tried to recall herself.

Mrs. Randolph gently tapped her shoulder with a mixture of maternal philosophy and discipline, and continued: “Of course, it’s an upset–and you’re confused still. That’s nothing. They say, dear, it’s perfectly well known that no two people’s recollections of these things ever are the same. It’s really ridiculous the contradictory stories one hears. Isn’t it, Emile?”

Rose felt that the young man had joined them and was looking at her. In the fear that she should still see some trace of the startled, selfish animal in his face, she did not dare to raise her eyes to his, but looked at his mother. Mrs. Randolph was standing then, collected but impatient.

“It’s all over now,” said Emile, in his usual voice, “and except the chimneys and some fallen plaster there’s really no damage done. But I’m afraid they have caught it pretty badly at the mission, and at San Francisco in those tall, flashy, rattle-trap buildings they’re putting up. I’ve just sent off one of the men for news.”

Her father was in San Francisco by that time; and she had never thought of him! In her quick remorse she now forgot all else and rose to her feet.

“I must telegraph to my father at once,” she said hurriedly; “he is there.”

“You had better wait until the messenger returns and hear his news,” said Emile. “If the shock was only a slight one in San Francisco, your father might not understand you, and would be alarmed.”