There were fewer bird
sounds now, and the garden beds were autumnal. But how beautiful it all
was! How wonderful life in such a place might be if flowers and birds
and sweep of sward, and mass of stately, broad-branched trees, were
parts of the home one loved and which surely would in its own way love
one in return. But soon all this phase of life would be over. Rosalie,
once safe at home, would look back, remembering the place with a
shudder. As Ughtred grew older the passing of years would dim miserable
child memories, and when his inheritance fell to him he might return to
see it with happier eyes. She began to picture to herself Rosy's voyage
in the ship which would carry her across the Atlantic to her mother
and the scenes connected in her mind only with a girl's happiness.
Whatsoever happened before it took place, the voyage would be made in
the end. And Rosalie would be like a creature in a dream--a heavenly,
unbelievable dream. Betty could imagine how she would look wrapped up
and sitting in her steamer chair, gazing out with rapturous eyes upon
the racing waves.
"She will be happy," she thought. "But I shall not. No, I shall not."
She drew in the morning air and unconsciously turned towards the place
where, across the rising and falling lands and behind the trees, she
knew the great white house stood far away, with watchers' lights showing
dimly behind the line of ballroom windows.
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