“Terrible,” she whispered back.  “Oh, Robert, you do not know; pray God you may never know.”

“I wish to God I could bear it for you, Aunt Lizzie,” Robert said, fervently.

“Oh, hush!  If you or Norman had to bear anything like this, I should curse God and die,” she answered, and she shut her mouth hard, and her whole face was indicative of a repressed shriek.

“Aunt Lizzie, don’t you think you ought to go to New York, that you ought—­” Robert began, but she stopped him with an almost fierce peremptoriness.  “Robert Lloyd, I have trusted you,” she said.  “For God’s sake, don’t forsake me.  Don’t say a word to me about that; when I can I will.  It means my death, anyhow.  Dr. Evarts thought so; you can’t deny it.”

“I think he thought there was a chance, Aunt Lizzie,” Robert returned, but he said it faintly.

“You can’t cheat me,” replied Mrs. Lloyd.  “I know.”  She had a lapse from pain, and her features began to assume their natural expression.  She looked at him almost smiling, and as if she turned her back upon her own misery.  “Where have you been, Robert?” she asked.

Robert colored a little, but he answered directly enough.  “I have been to make a call on Miss Brewster,” he said.

“You don’t go there very often,” said Mrs. Lloyd.

“No, not very often.”

“She’s a beautiful girl, as beautiful a girl as I ever laid eyes on, if she does work in the shop,” said Mrs. Lloyd, “and she’s a good girl, too; I know she is.  She was the sweetest little thing when she was a child, and she ’ain’t altered a mite!” Then Mrs. Lloyd looked with a sort of wistful curiosity at Robert.

“I think it is all true, what you say, Aunt Lizzie,” replied Robert.

Mrs. Lloyd continued to look at him with that wistful scrutiny.

“Robert,” she began, then she hesitated.

“What, Aunt Lizzie?”

“If—­ever you wanted to marry that girl, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t, for my part.”

Robert pulled a chair close to his aunt, and sat down beside her, still holding her hand.

“I’ve a good mind to tell you the whole story, Aunt Lizzie,” he said.

“I wish you would, Robert.  You know I think as much of you as if you were my own son, and I won’t tell anybody, not even your uncle, if you don’t want me to.”

“Well, then, it is all in a nutshell,” said Robert.  “I like her, you know, and I think I have ever since I saw her in her little white gown at the high-school exhibition.”

“Wasn’t she sweet?” said his aunt.

“And she likes me, too, I think.”

“Of course she does.”

“But you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a measure dependent upon her.”

“Hasn’t her father got work?”

“No.”

“I’ll speak to Norman,” cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly.  “I know he would do it for me.”

“But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and the child, and—­”