"In Freule Menela. She'll be hailing and thundering and lightning soon."
"Oh, do you think she'll try to get Robert back again?" gasped Phyllis.
"Unless another and riper fruit drops into her mouth."
"As if it would! You frighten me. Robert did beg last night that I'd marry him almost at once, and not go back to England—unless—on our honeymoon. I told him I wouldn't think of such a thing. But—perhaps—oh, we couldn't lose each other now. I do believe we were made for one another."
"I begin to believe so, too," said I.
And as that belief increased, so decreased the pain of my loss. Phyllis still is, and ever will be, a Burne-Jones Angel; and when, with her sleeves rolled up, she makes cake in the six-foot-by-six kitchen of "Waterspin," among the blue china and brasses, she is enough to melt the heart of Diogenes. Nevertheless, I cannot break mine at losing a girl who was born for a Robert van Buren. After all, Nell is more bewilderingly beautiful, and has twice Phyllis's magnetism. She has too fine a sense of humor to fall in love with a man's inches and muscles. That one speech of Phyllis's taught me resignation, and showed me in a flash that, despite her charms, she is somewhat early Victorian.
I glanced toward Nell, on whose brilliant face indifference to her good-looking cousin was expressed, as she stood talking to him—probably about himself—and wondered how, for a little while, my worship could have strayed from her to Phyllis. A girl born for Robert van Buren!—A sense of calm, beatific brotherliness stole through my veins. Nell had never been so lovely or so lovable, and I resolved to find out from my sister if she still thought there might be hope for me in that direction.
"I shouldn't keep Robert waiting," I went on, without a pang. "There's no telling what Freule Menela mightn't do. She's clever—as well as spiteful."
"And poor Robert is so honorable," sighed Phyllis. "If he'd known that you were working to—to free him, he might have felt it was a plot, and have refused to accept his release. You don't think I ought to tell him, do you?"
"Certainly not," said I. "That's our secret."