“My dear Frank, you have upset me sadly. I always thought it was an understood thing between you, and I had set my mind on it. For years I have planned and hoped for this. What objection can you have? It would make me very happy. You are like a son to me, Alice like a daughter; why can you not come together?” “My dear uncle,” Frank said, “there is hardly anything that I would not do to give you pleasure, but I can hardly change my present feeling for Alice into the love I should give to a wife. I am sorry, very sorry, that you are disappointed, but I never dreamed of such a thing. If you had spoken about it some years sooner, I might have got to look upon it in that way. But it is too late now.” “But I always thought you did understand, Frank. I have watched you both closely, and I thought you loved Alice, and I was quite sure Alice——” Captain Bradshaw did not finish his sentence, for the folding doors opened suddenly, and Alice Heathcote herself stood among them. Had not the light of the winter afternoon faded out,—the room being only lit by the deep red glow of the fire,—they would have seen that her face was very pale, and that her cheeks were still wet with tears. However, she gave them little time to notice this, for she moved hastily forward, and stood between them with her back to the fire, so that her face was in deep shadow. Then she said, trying to speak in a playful tone, but in a voice which shook and wavered a little as she began;— “My dear uncle, if you gentlemen want to talk secrets you should not choose a room with folding doors, through which every word can be heard. Not that I am sorry I heard what you said, in the first place, because I have a right to have a voice in a matter in which I am so much interested; and in the second, because I am able to come in and join my voice to Frank’s in asking you to let us each go our own way. You see, uncle, we make very good cousins, but we have no inclination to exchange that relationship for a nearer one. Let us have our own way, uncle: you cannot make two people love each other who have no natural inclination that way, and we could not love you better if we were married than we do separately.” Captain Bradshaw was silent for a moment in astonishment, and then broke out;— “Damme, Alice, if I understand you at all. I always thought——” Alice stepped forward, and laid her hands upon his shoulder, and murmured very low, so that only he could hear her, “Hush, uncle, for pity’s sake!” and then, more loudly, “you see, uncle, unfortunately, we have been playing at cross-purposes; Frank and I have been caring for each other in a brotherly and sisterly sort of way, and you, wanting it to be something else, have all along misinterpreted what you saw. Now, be a dear, kind uncle, as you always are, and let us have our own way.”