“Oh, Robbie, how like you it is! And this is your mother! I love her, she is so beautiful. No, I never will part with it, and I am so glad I have got it!”
He smiled fondly as he fastened it about her neck.
“I have a picture of you, you know. But my little Brightie must be brave now, and say ‘good-by,’ for it is time I was at home. Kiss me, darling.”
The red blood again mounted to her brow as his lips thrilled a lingering kiss upon hers. Then, forgetting everything except that he was going where she could not see him, she threw her arms around his neck, and sobs she could not restrain again racked her frame.
One long, long, close embrace, and he put her down and sprang from the room, out into the darkness of the night, wiping from his own cheek the fast-falling tears.
Dora flung herself full length upon the floor, in an utter abandonment of grief, and there her mother found her, an hour after, sound asleep, with the bright crystals still on her brown lashes.
Robert retraced his steps, and reached his room undiscovered, and though he was grieved and sad to part with Dora, yet he hugged to his heart with joy the knowledge that she was really and truly his very own, and that her love for him was all he could ask.
The next morning he started on his long journey, his father accompanying him as far as New York, from which place he was to sail.
Robert wept at parting with his only parent, and felt almost desolate to thus sunder every tie and go a stranger to a strange land. He had always loved and respected his father in spite of his cold, stern manner; still he would not beg to be allowed to remain at home, for he was fully determined to improve every advantage of travel and study, and thus fit himself to be a useful and happy man.
So when Mr. Ellerton coldly shook his hand at parting, he could not realize the agony that whitened his boy’s proud face, and hardened his already stern voice; nor could he know how that pent-up anguish burst forth as the vessel bore him from his father’s lingering eyes, from which the tears rolled fast and unheeded, as he turned with aching heart to go back to his lonely home.