"For God's sake! Professor Berger? The very picture of a clear and lofty mind. How can that be? Did you tell papa and mamma?"
"No, and I beg you will not tell them; I could not bear just now to hear the matter discussed."
"You were very fond of the professor?"
"He was my best, perhaps my only friend."
"How I pity you!" said Helen, and she showed very clearly in her beautiful face the sympathy she felt. "Such a loss must be terrible. And you are here quite alone with your grief, and no one to sympathize with your suffering?"
"I have been accustomed to that all my life."
"Have you no parents, no near relatives?"
"My mother died when I was an infant; my father died many years ago; I never had brother or sister, nor have I ever known any relatives of mine."
Helen was silent, drawing lines in the sand with the point of her sun-shade.
Suddenly she raised her head and said, in a tone that sounded half like complaint and half like defiance: