“Anything, everything, Percy,” he said.

“That you will give up Africa and go to Heidelberg.”

“I will, I will, since you wish it.”

She drew his face down and kissed him on his mouth, two long, sweet kisses, saying, “Good-bye, and God bless you, cousin!”

He stood like a blind man as she gently drew herself from his embrace, then wringing Ross’s hand in a grasp that made him wince, he strode out of the house without a word.

Percy, going to where her husband sat, said humbly, “I was so sorry for him, I could not help it.  You do not care—­very much?”

“Harry Barton loved you and wanted to marry you?”

“Yes, Ross.  I’ve been very unhappy about it for years, he’s wasted his life so, and angered his family.  Indeed, it was not my fault:  I never gave him reason.”

“Yet you married me without a pretence of love, and he’s richer and handsomer and a better man than I, every way?  I don’t understand it, child.”

“Yes, I married you, knowing you did not love me.”  His arms almost crushed her at that truth.  “He may be richer:  he is no better, I think, and”—­holding his face between her hands with a quizzical survey for an instant—­“it’s barefaced scandal to assert that he is as handsome, by one half.  Poor, handsome Ross, to think that all your manifold charms should have purchased you only ugly little me!” and she laughed a merry, mocking laugh at his protesting hug.  “It’s true, though—­it’s the very climax of opposites, a perfection of contrasts.”  Then, her light manner gone, she added:  “You are very, very good to me, Ross.  He would never have been so patient of my old griefs and lost loves.  I told you my masculine cousins were always crying for the grapes that hung out of their reach, you know.”  Then suddenly growing grave:  “Oh, Ross, it was not my fault:  I could not help it.  I think the boys got to pitying me because they thought my life was hard, and because their sisters treated me very cruelly sometimes.  Then my uncles very foolishly ordained that I should teach their sons their Latin and help them with their studies.  So out of school-hours my time was mostly spent with one or the other, or all of them.  Sheldon Wilber and I are of the same age, and having been my father’s constant companion, I was better up in all his studies than he was himself; so I used to do his college lessons with him, until he got to thinking, as he used to say, I was his very breath.  Then afterward I gave the other two the benefit of what we had studied, got them out of scrapes, and indeed, being with them so much, kept them out.  Don’t let’s talk about them any more, Ross:  I have ‘fessed’ all now.”

“Not all, my sweet:  you have not told me who it is that has shut your heart from us all.”

“Don’t, Ross!” and she shrank away from him as if he had struck her a blow.

“Ah, well, my wife, keep your secret:  I’ll not touch your sacred past.  I’ll try to learn to be content with my little sister, thankful I have so much.”