l lone...." His lips began to quiver with the sad sound of
his own broken words.... "Don't c'y...." he pleaded, big tears bursting
from his own eyes.... "Bobby 'tay wiv you.... Bobby tate tare of you....
Don't c'y...."

And with this he began to sob himself as though his little heart would
break.

Sophy started from her trance of numbness. She caught the boy to her....
Then her tears came.... Then she remembered Cecil as her young lover ...
her husband.... Then he became real to her again, as she clasped his son
in her arms and they wept together.

The Marchesa had stolen out.

"_Ringrazio Dio!_" she said in her heart. She, too, was weeping.

PART II

I

Sophy spent the winter that followed her husband's death in the little
cottage at Bonchurch. Her one desire, after Cecil's body had been laid
in the Chapel-crypt at Dynehurst, was to return "to her own land and her
own people." But Bellamy had warned her against an autumn crossing for
Bobby, and the sudden change to a severer climate. At first she could
not bring herself to walk or ride--the sight of blue water sparkling in
the sun was so dreadful to her. And it grew to be almost an
hallucination that, whenever she looked on it, she saw also a yellow
chair, bobbing drolly to the motion of the waves. Little by little she
dominated this aversion from the sea. Had it been a lake near which
Bonchurch lay, she could not have borne it. But here, after two months,
she began to ride daily, and gradually grew strong again.

It was on a lovely day in June when she reached the little country
station of Sweet-Waters. The chuckle of Sweet-Water creek, that just
here made a special music among crowding stones, rose dearly familiar.
And there--there were her Mountains! Tears shut them out for a moment.
Before she could see them clearly again, Charlotte's arms were round
her. They clung together speechless.

"Oh!" murmured Sophy at last, her face buried in Charlotte's neck. "Oh,
Chartie ... how you smell of _home_!"

This made them both laugh. But they were crying, too. The sisters loved
each other as twins sometimes do, though they were not twins. Charlotte
was eight years older than Sophy. And there, in the broad afternoon
sunlight, Sophy again buried her face in her sister's neck to savour the
sweet "home" fragrance.

Then she put Bobby in Charlotte's arms. Now Charlotte was afraid to
speak. She pressed the boy to her in silence. At last she said:

"He