"

"I didn't mean just that," I stammered, feeling my cheeks grow hot. For,
albeit, Doloria had slept part of a night with her head against my
shoulder when we fared alone in the purity of our wilderness, now, since
others of the world were touching elbows with us, Echochee's words
knocked me rather into a self-conscious heap. But such is the bitter
tithe we must toss into the maw of civilization which, despite its
multitude of admitted blessings, breeds also the false! And I stepped
into the punt wishing that this daughter of our oldest American family
could be divinely appointed arbiter of our customs.

Smilax returned with word that both yachts would be at Little Cove, and
one by one the lights in our camp went out. But I sat late at Efaw
Kotee's desk writing a ten-page telegram and a fifty-page letter to my
father. Both of these I would despatch from Key West--the wire telling
him to bring the Mater to Miami where the letter would await them; and I
urged them both, as they loved me, to pick up a certain darling of the
gods named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that,
and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But
this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for
his masterly scheme of sailing both yachts homeward.

The next morning after an early breakfast our cavalcade set forth, each
man carrying a pack except the two sailors on whose shoulders rested the
poles of Doloria's chair. But in this chair sat a very sad little
princess--this morning particularly, as she was leaving a nominal home
for a new and mystifying adventure. Whatever else Efaw Kotee had been to
her, at least he stood in her memory of father; and however irrevocably
she may have turned against him, the very fact that she found it
necessary to do so was a grievous disappointment.

All that had passed. Strangers had come, and in a few days she was being
borne to the other half of the world. To her mother!--what did she know
of a mother? To a throne!--but with an unknown prince to rule beside
her? And these were entirely apart from the longings she might leave on
this side of the world. Surely, if she needed sympathy at any time it
was now as the march began.

Although Monsieur had taken a position close to her, and evidently meant
to keep it, before we had gone very far I fell in alongside with them,
asking:

"How do you find the march? Tiring?"

"Oh, no, not in Tommy's flying thr