"There, Nora! that's much more like you! thank you! It was an excellent lunch; it was after lunch he said he hoped that we should marry, because, as I have already observed, he knew that----" "Yes; we'll take that for granted; please go on." "I'm going on as fast as ever I can; but it'll only be another case of more haste worse speed if you won't let me tell my tale my own way, because, if I don't, I'm nearly sure to leave out essential details. Among other things he remarked that, one day, you'd be a rich young woman." "You're sure he said that?" "Quite; your father could express himself clearly enough if he chose; and he expressed himself clearly then." "But--I don't understand." "Wait a bit; I'm going to make you understand, if you'll have a little patience. Later, I cannot say that he said so clearly, but he intimated, that he obtained his income from some business with which he was connected, and which represented to him a large sum of money." "Business! I didn't know that he had anything to do with any business." "Mind, he didn't state definitely that he had; and I asked no questions, but that was what he hinted. Then he said something which, in the light of recent events, appears to me to have been rather remarkable. He observed that life was always uncertain; that one could never tell the hour when one would die, and that, therefore, since I was going to be the husband of his only child, he would like to place in my hands directions as to what he would desire to have done, in case death took him unawares; or before he completed certain arrangements which he then had in view." "What a strange thing for him to say!" "You see how necessary it was that I should see you face to face, and how difficult it would have been to put this on to paper? Nora, I love you!" "Are you--are you really telling me what my father said?" "I'm going to tell you everything he said, if you'll give me time enough; only don't suppose for a moment that you're going to keep me from saying that I love you; especially as it was because he knew I loved you, and believed that you loved me, that he told me what he did." "I--I wish you'd go on." "After I'd been a few days in Cairo there came a package in which there was a note from him; a brief and characteristic note, to this effect. 'Dear Robert,' you see he called me Robert." He paused, as if to challenge her. "Nora, I wish you'd call me Robert; it's a stupid, ugly, vulgar, clumsy name, but you don't know how I long to hear it on your lips." "I--I don't know that it's any of the things you say it is; I--I don't know that there's anything particularly the matter with the name." "That's very sweet of you." "But I don't think it's either fair or kind of you to try to take advantage of me like this!" "Take advantage of you! is your sense of justice so warped that you can say a thing like that! In what sense am I supposed to be trying to take advantage of you, Nora?"