“No, I want to be with you, Uncle Lloyd.”
She was sitting on the arm of his morris chair, softly stroking his heavy hair away from his forehead.
“Looks like it, the way you hurried back,” Dr. Fenneben said, smiling.
“But Uncle Joshua is n't well, although, to be honest, he didn't seem a bit anxious to have me stay. He's so wrapped up in Sanscrit he has no time to live in the present. Why didn't he ever marry?”
“You have just said why,” her uncle answered her.
“Why did n't you ever marry. Were you ever in love?”
The library lamp cast only a shaded light over Lloyd Fenneben lounging comfortably in his chair. To a woman's eye he would have seemed the picture of an ideal husband.
“Yes, I was in love once. I did n't marry because—because—I didn't.”
“How romantic! Was it unrequited, or money, or what?” Norrie asked, eagerly.
“Or what,” he answered, and her finer sense made her change the subject.