If she had asked Aimée to spring from the wall into the waves washing softly against it, the girl could hardly have been more surprised. Her face showed this plainly, but after an instant’s hesitation she said: “I will do anything that I can for you--where do you want me to go?” “It will not be pleasant at all, and I feel as if it was very selfish to ask it of you,” said Miss Berrien. “But then you are only a child, and it can not compromise you as it would compromise _me_; and you are as brave as a lion, so you won’t be afraid to come here after dark, will you?” “_Here?_” said Aimée, glancing around. “Yes, here,” answered her companion. “A boat, with Lennox in it, will be here at midnight. You must tell him that I can not come, that I--But never mind, I will give the message at the time. Will you do it for me?” If Aimée’s courage failed at such a prospect, she felt that it would never do to betray as much. She had pledged herself to do “anything,” and she must not fail when something was demanded. “Yes, I will do it,” she said, “if there is no other way; but why can you not write and let him know?” “Write!” repeated the other. “Why, you foolish child, have I not told you where he is?” “I don’t think you have,” said Aimée--conscious, however, that in the multiplicity of statements which had been made to her, the particular statement relative to Mr. Kyrle’s whereabouts might not have received due attention. “He is there,” said Fanny with a comprehensive wave of her hand toward the Atlantic Ocean. “Did I not tell you that he is in a yacht?” “Oh! has he a yacht?” cried Aimée; “and can you refuse to go with him?” “I might not refuse if it was his own yacht--for a man must be very rich to afford a yacht--but it is not his own. It is borrowed from a friend ‘for this occasion only,’” said Fanny, with a slight laugh. “His plan is certainly very well arranged. He borrows the yacht, as I have said, runs down here, lies off the inlet and brings a boat up to St. Augustine for me--I step into it, we return to the yacht, run to Key West or Pensacola and are married, then cruise for a month among the West Indies. How would you like such a programme as that, Aimée?” “How would I like it?” repeated Aimée. Words were evidently too weak to express her sentiments; but she clasped her hands and her eyes shone like stars. “It would be glorious!” she cried, with a thrill in her voice. “I never read of anything more beautiful. I don’t believe, I _can’t_ believe, but that you mean to go.” “You may believe it, then,” said Miss Berrien, shortly. “It is very well to be romantic when you don’t have to pay a price for romance; but when you do, and it is such a heavy one as a life of poverty--sailing and love-making can’t last forever, and what is to come after? I asked myself that question, and the answer made me stop.”