“Isn’t it glorious?” “Lovely,” assented Champney, emphatically, but staring all the time at Frances, making it doubtful of what he was speaking. Frances, being quite conscious of this gaze, looked all the harder at the view. “The mountains shut in so grandly!” she remarked, after a pause. “Such perfect solitude!” said Champney, enthusiastically. “Yes,” assented Frances, with apparent reluctance in admitting the fact. “But I suppose we must be going down again; mama will be lonely.” Champney calmly seated himself on a stone, unstrung his field-glass, and surveyed through it the edge of the lake, far below them. “Your mother,” he announced, “is sitting on the rug, just where we left her. Her back is against the tree, and she is pretending to read. But she’s doing nothing of the kind. She is taking a nap on the sly. Surely you don’t want to disturb her?” “It must be nearly luncheon time.” “The boatmen haven’t even begun to unpack yet. Johann is just taking the Vöslauer out of the boat, to cool it in the lake. They won’t be ready for half an hour.” Frances began to look a little worried. There was a dangerous persistence in this evident desire to remain on the alp. “I think I’ll go down, anyway,” she said. “You mustn’t do that,” begged Champney, laying the field-glass on the rock. “Why not?” demanded Frances. “Because I have something to say to you,” said Champney. Silence and apparent interest in the view on the part of Frances. “Do you know,” asked Champney, “that I planned to be away for only two months?” “Yes.” “And that I have been over here more than eight?” “Oh, not so long as that,” denied Frances. “Eight months and four days.” “How quickly the time has gone!” “But it has gone, and that’s the trouble. I have decided that I _must_ go back in September.” Frances hesitated, and then said bravely, “We shall be very sorry to have you go.” “That makes it all the harder,” groaned Champney, rising and joining Frances. “In fact, I hate so to leave you” (“you” can be plural or singular) “over here that—that I want you to go back with me. Will you?” “Why, that is for mama and papa to settle,” remarked Frances, artfully dodging the question, though perfectly understanding it. “This isn’t to be settled by fathers and mothers. My dar—my—I want you to go—because you have become so dear to me. I want to tell you—to tell you how I have grown to love you in these months. How happy you can make me by a single word. I—you—once you told me you were not ‘my dear child.’ Oh, Frances, won’t you be my dearest love?” “If you want me to be,” acceded Frances. ⁂