Only one thing has kept me from being very downhearted
sometimes, when time passed, and we heard nothing of you, and I was
obliged to give you up.'

'You should not have given me up.'

'Yes; there was nothing else for it. I found it was best not to think
about you at all. Happily I had plenty of duties to think of. And
duties, if you take hold of them right, become pleasures.'

'Doing them for the Master.'

'Yes, and for our fellow-creatures too. Both interests come in.'

'And so make life full and rich, even in common details of it. But,
Queen Esther,--my Queen!--do you know that you will be my Queen always?
That word expresses your future position, as far as I am concerned.'

'No,' said Esther a little nervously; 'I think hardly. Where there is a
queen, there is commonly also a king somewhere, you know.'

'His business is to see the queen's commands carried out.'

'We will not quarrel about it,' said Esther, laughing. 'But, after all,
Pitt, that is not like you. You always knew your own mind, and always
had your own way, when I used to know you.'

'It is your turn.'

'It would be a very odd novelty in my life,' said Esther. 'But now,
Pitt, I really must go and see about luncheon. Papa will be down, and
Mrs. Barker does not know that you are here. And it would be a sort of
relief to take hold of something so commonplace as luncheon; I seem to
myself to have got into some sort of unreal fairyland.'

'I am in fairyland too, but it is real.'

'Let me go, Pitt, please!'

'Luncheon is of no consequence.'

'Papa will think differently.'

'I will go out and got some oysters, to conciliate him.'

'To _conciliate_ him!'

'Yes. He will need conciliating, I can tell you. Do you suppose he will
look on complacently and see you, who have been wholly his possession
and property, pass over out of his hands into mine? It is not human
nature.'

Esther stood still and coloured high.

'Does papa know?'

'He knows all about it, Queen Esther; _except_ what you may have said
to me. I think he understood what I was going to say to you.'

'Poor papa!' said Esther thoughtfully.

'Not at all,' said Pitt inconsistently. 'We will take care of him
together, much better than you could alone.'

Esther drew a long breath.

'Then you speak to Barker, and I will get some oysters,' said Pitt with
a parting kiss, and was off in a moment.

The luncheon after all passed off quite tolerably well. The colonel
took the oyster