“He was cross, too, and drank too much wine,” Gertie said; “and auntie says he’s dead, and I guess I hain’t any relatives now, but a grandmother, and I don’t know where she is. I heard auntie tell a woman once that I had a history stranger than a story-book, but when I asked her about it she looked cross, and bade me never listen, and said if there was anything I ought to know, she would surely tell me. Sometimes when I see grand people, I think, maybe, I am one of them, for I feel just as they act, and could act just like them, if I tried.” “Maybe you are a princess in disguise,” Robert said, laying his hand kindly on the bright flowing hair. “Gertie, do you know you are the very image of the only sister I ever had? Dorothea was the name, but I called her Dora, and loved her so much.” “And she died?” Gertie said, guessing the fact from the tremor in the young man’s voice and the moisture in his eyes. “Yes, she died, and I have no picture of her, and that is why I wanted you to sit for me. You are so much like her. Maybe if you tell your aunt the reason she will allow it when we reach America. I am going to Hampstead, too, for a time, to visit Mr. Godfrey. Will you speak to her about it?” Gertie promised that she would, and kept her word, and Mrs. Rogers said she would see, which Gertie took as an affirmative reply and reported to the young man, telling him, too, that auntie had forbidden her to talk much with him, and telling Godfrey that he must not come where she was, for auntie did not like it, and said it was “no good.” “And I didn’t tell her, either, that you kissed me; if I had, she would have been angry, and maybe shut me up in that close, dark stateroom; but you are never to do it again.” “No, not till you say you think me a perfect gentleman; then I shall claim my reward,” Godfrey said, laughingly, and as Mary Rogers appeared in view, with the look of a termagant on her face, he turned his back on Gertie and pretended to be very intent upon a sail just appearing in the distant horizon. CHAPTER XXI. THE LADIES AT SCHUYLER HILL.