"Come back again, aunt!" said the youth, with sudden and bitter earnestness. "Is there any coming back in this life? When we are changed, and places are changed—always ourselves most—how can a return to one spot be called coming back?"
"But I am not changed—the place is just as it was," pleaded the kind aunt.
"But I am changed, aunt—I can throw myself by your side, and lay my head upon your lap as if I were a petted child still, but it would not be natural—we could not force ourselves into believing it natural."
"How strangely you talk, Robert; to me you are a child yet."
"But to myself I am not a child, I have thought, felt—yes, I have suffered only as men think, feel and suffer. Oh, aunt, if I had never lived with any one but you, how much better it would have been!"
The youth had cast himself on the hearth by his aunt, and rested his beautiful head upon her knee. Tears—those warm bright tears that youth alone can shed—filled his eyes without impairing their brightness.
The old lady pressed her hand upon his hair, and looked lovingly into those brimming eyes. "And this comes of being a gentleman!" she whispered, shaking her head with a gentle motion.
The youth gave a faint shudder, and turning his head so that his eyes were buried in the folds of her dress, sobbed aloud.
"Why, Robert, Robert, what is this?—what trouble is upon you?"