ch me some books to read--to pass the dismal hours of
your absence."

"Very well; now let me go."

He released her plump little hand, and Rose drew on her gloves.

"Adieu, Mr. Reinecourt," moving to the door.

"_Au revoir_, Miss Danton, until to-morrow morning."

Rose rode home in delight. In one instant the world had changed. St.
Croix had become a paradise, and the keen air sweet as "Ceylon's spicy
breezes." As Alice Carey says, "What to her was our world with its
storms and rough weather," with that pallid face, those eyes of darkest
splendour, that magnetic voice, haunting her all the way. It was love at
sight with Miss Danton the second. What was the girlish fancy she had
felt for Jules La Touche--for Dr. Frank--for a dozen others, compared
with this.

Joe, the stable-boy, led away Regina, and Rose entered the house.
Crossing the hall, she met Eeny going upstairs.

"Well!" said Eeny, "and where have you been all day, pray?"

"Out riding."

"Where?"

"Oh, everywhere! Don't bother!"

"Do you know we have had luncheon?"

"I don't care--I don't want luncheon."

She ran past her sister, and shut herself up in her room. Eeny stared.
In all her experience of her sister she had never known her to be
indifferent to eating and drinking. For the first time in Rose's life,
love had taken away her appetite.

All that afternoon she stayed shut up in her chamber, dreaming as only
eighteen, badly in love, does dream. When darkness fell, and the lamps
were lit, and the dinner-bell rang, she descended to the dining-room
indifferent for the first time whether she was dressed well or ill.

"What does it matter?" she thought, looking in the glass; "he is not
here to see me."

Doctor Frank and the Reverend Augustus Clare dropped in after dinner,
but Rose hardly deigned to look at them. She reclined gracefully on a
sofa, with half shut eyes, listening to Kate playing one of Beethoven's
"Songs without Words," and seeing--not the long, lamp-lit drawing-room
with all its elegant luxuries, or the friends around her, but the bare
best room of the old yellow farm-house, and the man lying lonely and ill
before the blazing fire. Doctor Danton sat down beside her and talked to
her; but Rose answered at random, and was so absorbed, and silent, and
preoccupied, as to puzzle every one. Her father asked her to sing. Rose
begged to be excused--she could not sing to-night. Kate looked at her in
wonder.

"What is the matter with y