"It is not necessary," Dolores replied, blushing painfully. "We could go the next week as well. We need not trouble Mr. Durand to act as our escort on this voyage, Mrs. Butler."
"Why, what in the world has come over you?" cried Mrs. Butler, staring with wondering eyes at Dolores. "You speak as if Percy were a stranger, instead of our almost brother and son. I am sure he will wait for us, if we cannot go next week. I have an unaccountable dread of making the voyage unattended. I shall feel far safer with our friend by my side; and, somehow, I am sure we shall need him."
So again Percy's earnest desire to fly from an embarrassing position was circumvented, and he was once more to be the companion of Dolores.
Mrs. Butler seemed to rally with a feverish excitement as they made their preparations for departure. Dolores watched her with anxious eyes.
"I fear you are not strong enough to take the sea-voyage at this time of year," she urged. "Will you not wait until later in the season, dear Mrs. Butler?"
But Mrs. Butler would not listen. "I can scarcely wait until next week;" she said, "I could not possibly delay my departure another month. It would make me ill, I know. Once on the ocean I shall grow stronger."
But instead she drooped, and failed; and on the fifth day of the stormy voyage, Percy and Dolores stood beside her shrouded form listening to the solemn service for the dead at sea.
They were standing on the deck, quite alone, the evening before they reached harbor....
Dolores drew a long shivering sigh. "Oh," she said, "I dread the sight of land! It seems to me, I am going into some arid desert, where I shall faint, and die, from very loneliness. I have lost my friend who was almost like an own mother to me. And now I am to lose you. Life is cruel to me. I think it is wicked for parents to bring children into this world of trouble and sorrow. Oh, why was I ever born to swell the tide of miserable suffering humanity?"