“Goodness knows I don’t want to leave him,” she said, “but he insists that I must. He has arranged for everything. I tried to say No, but he won’t listen. He will have his own way, as he always does, I suppose. I know how lonesome he will be. I shall be almost as lonely without him,” she added. Nabby seemed to be thinking. There was an odd expression upon her face. “You don’t suppose--” she began, and stopped in the middle of the sentence. “I don’t suppose what?” Esther asked. “Oh, nothin’! It’s silly, I guess. I just wondered--it come across my mind--if it might be he was sendin’ you off so’s to get you away from--well, from this Bob Griffin.... Humph! No, ’tain’t likely he’d do that, because--” Esther broke in. Her face was flushed and her tone indignantly resentful. “The idea!” she cried. “What do you mean by saying such a thing, Nabby Gifford? How ridiculous! What has Bob Griffin got to do with my going abroad? Uncle and I had planned to go together; we have talked about it ever so many times. What on earth are you talking about?” Mrs. Gifford hastily protested that she had not meant anything. “’Twas just a foolish notion, I know,” she admitted. “Don’t know why I said it, I don’t. Of course if Cap’n Foster wanted to get clear of that Cook boy he’d have told him his room was a whole lot better’n his company. He don’t _have_ to let him come here.” “Oh, stop! Why shouldn’t he come here? He hasn’t anything to do with the old lawsuit. Yes, and so far as that goes, Uncle Foster asked him to call.” Nabby stared. For an instant her mouth, which had opened to speak, closed and remained so. Varunas had vowed, during one of their domestic conferences, that he would give something for a tintype of her in that condition. “Only ’twould be so mirac’lous nobody’d believe ’twas you,” he had added. The miraculous condition lasted but the fraction of a second. The mouth opened again. “_What!_” gasped Nabby. “Do you mean to tell me that Cap’n Foster _asked_ that Griffin one to come to this house--really asked him?” Esther hesitated. She had spoken too hastily. And what she had said was not the exact truth. Her uncle had not invited Bob to call; he had merely prophesied that he would call. But at all events he had not forbidden him to do so. “Oh, never mind!” she said, turning impatiently away. “What difference does it make?... Here is Uncle now, thank goodness!”