"Tell me why you ran away from us as you did? Oh!" she exclaimed, clasping her pretty hands, "I've thought over and over the questions I wanted to ask you, things I wanted to tell you, and now I forget them all. Cousin Antony, it wasn't kind to leave us as you did,—Gardiner and me."
He watched her as she took a chair, half-leaning on its back before his covered work. Bella's pose was graceful and elegant. Girl as she was, she was a little woman of the world. She swung her gloves between her fingers, looking up at him.
"It's nearly five years, Cousin Antony."
"I know it."
She laughed and blushed. "I've been running after you, shockingly, haven't I? I ran away from home and found you in the queer little street in the queer little home with those angel Irish people! How are they all, Cousin Antony, and the freckled children?"
"Bella," her cousin asked, "haven't they nearly finished with you in school? You are grown up."
She shook her head vehemently. "Nonsense, I'm a dreadful hoyden still. Think of it! I've never been on the roll of honour yet at St. Mary's."
"No?" he smiled. "They were wrong not to put you there. How is Aunt Caroline?"
The girl's face clouded, and she said half under her breath—
"Why, don't you know?"