“Do you know—does your little highness happen to know, Princess Hagar, what inconvenience you have put me to—what an agreeable three weeks I have passed—two weeks confined in the close cabin of a little sea-tossed packet, drenched with rain and beset with easterly winds which were of course contrary; then one week’s voyage back, in weather a little worse than the other, except that the wind was favorable; to say nothing of the seeming folly of resigning my appointment at the moment the embassy was to sail. You have inconvenienced the administration also, Hagar! think of their having to _improvise_ a successor for me at the last moment.” “But who would have thought that you would have been so stubborn?” laughed Hagar. “Stubborn! it was _you_ who were stubborn, Hagar. Good heavens! I never encountered such a will in my life!” “I could not have believed that you would have gone!” “I could not have believed that you would have suffered me to go.” “But I expected you to give up.” “And I wished you to yield. Where is that boy? Where is Tarquinius? Oh, immediately behind us; I thought so. Come, Tarquinius! come, Superbus! hurry home and get tea in—you waited tea for me, Hagar?” “Oh, of course.” Tarquinius toiled with all his might and main ahead; but hurrying home, up that steep, slippery cliff, was not such sure and expeditious work, and Tarquinius kept near them perforce, while poor Raymond, still bending forward, looked down into Hagar’s liquid eyes and lips, like Tantalus looked at the spring that was sparkling, leaping, and laughing invitation and defiance in his face. “_Oh-h!_” groaned and smiled Raymond. “Are you tired?” questioned Hagar, maliciously. “No, you monkey.” “I am afraid you are,” said Hagar. In reply to which Raymond stooped down, and lifting her lightly in his arms, ran up the steep with her, and set her down upon the top, then smilingly drew her arm again within his own, and they went to the house. How cheerfully the firelight and the candle-light glowed from the two windows under the shed of the piazza! “I love to see a light within the house at night so much!” said Raymond, “and I like it better even in cities than in the country—it looks so very cheerful; and then to go through long streets at night, in which the houses are closed up from top to bottom, and you only guess life within through a chink in the shutter—it has to me the most ungenial, unsocial, selfish look in the world. I always kept the windows of my lodgings open until I went to bed, would you believe it of me, Hagar, just to add a little to the cheerfulness of our dark back street.” Sophie came out to meet them smiling, with her brown eyes looking so loving, and conducted them in. Raymond had changed his clothes, and tea was over, and they gathered around the fire, Sophie with her needle-work, Hagar, the idle one, with a spiteful black kitten on her lap, whose antics amused her, and distressed Remus and Romulus, who were _couchant_ at her feet.