at her wistfully, and
dropped her hand.

"Has he gone?" asked Phillis, looking up in surprise as her sister
came through the open window; "has he gone without finding anything
out?"

"Yes, he has gone, and he does not know anything," replied Nan, in a
subdued voice, as she seated herself behind the urn. It was over now,
and she was ready for anything. "Take care of yourself for my sake,
Nan!"--that was ringing in her ears; but she had not said a word in
reply. Only the rose lay in his hand,--her parting gift, and perhaps
her parting pledge.

CHAPTER IX.

A LONG DAY.

Nan never recalled the memory of that "long gray day," as she inwardly
termed it, without a shiver of discomfort.

Never but once in her bright young life had she known such a day, and
that was when her dead father lay in the darkened house, and her
widowed mother had crept weeping into her arms as to her only
remaining refuge; but that stretched so far back into the past that it
had grown into a vague remembrance.

It was not only that Dick was gone, though the pain of that separation
was far greater than she would have believed possible, but a moral
earthquake had shattered their little world, involving them in utter
chaos.

It was only yesterday that she was singing ballads in the Longmead
drawing-room,--only yesterday; but to-day everything was changed. The
sun shone, the birds sang, every one ate and drank and moved about as
usual. Nan talked and smiled, and no stranger would have guessed that
much was amiss; nevertheless, a weight lay heavy on her spirits, and
Nan knew in her secret heart that she could never be again the same
light-hearted, easy-going creature that she was yesterday.

Later on, the sisters confessed to each other that the day had been
perfectly interminable; the hours dragged on slowly; the sun seemed as
though it never meant to set; and to add to their trouble, their
mother looked so ill when she came downstairs, wrapped in her soft
white shawl in spite of the heat, that Nan thought of sending for a
doctor, and only refrained at the remembrance that they had no right
to such luxuries now except in cases of necessity.

Then Dorothy was in one of her impracticable moods, throwing cold
water on all her young mistress's suggestions, and doing her best to
disarrange the domestic machinery. Dorothy suspected a mystery
somewhere; her young ladies had sat up half the night, and looked pale
and owlish in the morning. I