en, and he listened and
watched now with an infinite relief in his look. Her face was half
turned towards him. It was pale-very pale and sad. It was Rosalie as of
old--thank God, as of old!--but more beautiful in the touching sadness,
the far-off longing, of her look.

"I must go and see your master," she said to the dogs. "Down--down,
Lazybones!"

There was no time to lose--he must not meet her ere. He went into the
outer hall hastily. The servant was passing through. "If any one
asks for Jo Portugais," he said, "say that I'll be back to-morrow
morning--I'm going across the river to-day."

"Certainly, M'sieu'," said the girl, and smiled because of the piece of
silver he put in her hand.

As he heard the side door open he stepped through the front doorway into
the street, and disappeared round a corner.

CHAPTER XLVII. ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT

Rosalie carried to the hospital that afternoon a lighter heart than she
had known for many a day. The sight of Jo Portugais' dogs had roused
her out of the apathy which had been growing on her in this patient
but hopeless watching beside her father. She had always a smile and a
cheerful word for the poor man. A settled sorrow hung upon her face,
however, taking away its colour, but giving it a sweet gravity which
made her slave more than one young doctor of the hospital, for whom,
however, she showed no more than a friendly frankness, free from
self-consciousness. For hours she would sit in reverie beside her
sleeping father, her heart "over the water to Charley." As in a trance,
she could see him sitting at his bench, bent over his work, now and
again lifting up his head to look across to the post-office, where
another hand than hers sorted letters now.

Day by day her father weakened and faded away. All that was possible to
medical skill had been done. As the money left by her mother dwindled,
she had no anxiety, for she knew that the life she so tenderly cherished
would not outlast the gold which lengthened out the tenuous chain of
being. This last illness of her father's had been the salvation of her
mind, the saving of her health. Maybe it had been the saving of her
soul; for at times a curious contempt of life came upon her--she who had
loved it so eagerly and fully. There descended on her then the bitter
conviction that never again would she see the man she loved. Then not
even Mrs. Flynn could call back "the fun o' the world" to her step and
her ton