"Always my love and reverence," said Sara, with a touch of the old- fashioned manner that Robert thought one of her greatest charms. "And, if you think I may trouble her, I will write what there is to tell, though even Miss Prue does not know all the dreams I have had for the future."
"Why should she?" asked the young man jealously. "My aunt may not be so old a friend, but I am sure she is as good a one."
"She's more than kind! I can't understand," with a little burst of confidence, "why you are all so good to a poor fisherman's daughter like me?" They had risen, and he had shaken himself into his fur-trimmed great-coat; now he turned, hat in hand, and looked down upon her, for, though Sara was tall for a girl of eighteen, he towered well above her.
"You ask why?" he began in a quick, eager tone, then something in her calm face seemed to alter his mind, or at least speech, for he added more carelessly, "Do you think it so queer? But you forget you are a princess!" laughing lightly. "Well, good-night; it is time for me to go," and, with a more hasty farewell than he had intended, he turned, and left her standing in the doorway.
* * * * *
The next morning he was sitting before a cheerful grate fire in his aunt's private parlor at a certain hotel in Boston, his long legs stretched towards the blaze, and his chin dropped meditatively on his breast, while she, at the other end of the leopard-skin, worked busily on some fleecy white wool-work, occasionally glancing towards his darkly-thoughtful face.
"Ah, well, Robare," she said at last, "this is then your last evening here?"
He shook himself a little, sat upright, took his hands from his pockets, and, forcing a smile, turned to her.
"Yes, Aunt Felicie; and a nice way to spend it, glowering at the fire!
Where's uncle?"
"He has to that meeting gone at the Natural History building; I cannot its name remember. Why? had you a private word to say?"