sat down, Elly still keeping her arm linked in her aunt's.

"Tell you what, Elly?"

"See, I am quite a big girl now; do tell me about him."

Bertha was somewhat alarmed, for it struck her at once that her niece's
question did not refer to her dead husband, but to some one else. And
suddenly she saw before her mind's eye the picture of Emil Lindbach,
just as she had seen it in the illustrated paper; but immediately both
the vision and her slight alarm vanished, and she felt a kind of emotion
at the shy question of the young girl who believed that she still grieved
for her dead husband, and that it would comfort her to have an
opportunity for talking about him.

"May I come down and join you, or are you telling each other secrets?"

Richard's voice came at that moment from a window overlooking the
courtyard. For the first time Bertha was struck by the resemblance he
bore to Emil Lindbach. She realized, however, that it might perhaps only
be the youthfulness of his manner and his rather long hair that put her
in mind of Emil. Richard was now nearly as old as Emil had been in the
days of her studies at the conservatoire.

"I've reserved a table," he said as he came into the courtyard. "Are you
coming with us, Aunt Bertha?"

He sat down on the back of her chair, stroked her cheeks, and said in his
fresh, yet rather affected, way: