"Has he told you so?"
"Not a word."
"If he does, tell me, grannie. Betray him. I need to know everything he knows—everything."
It was a new Rose, one none of them in America had yet seen. There were tumultuous yearnings in her voice, innocent insistencies; she seemed to be clamoring for life, the boon that it was right and sweet for her to have.
"He doesn't speak of you," said grannie. "What could come of it, if he did?"
"What could come of it? Everything could come of it. I shall write him by every mail. Tell him that. I will write him all my life, every minute of it from morning till night. And I will come back, soon, soon,—as soon as I have earned money to be honest on. Tell him that, grannie."
But grannie sighed.
"I am afraid you are not very reasonable," she said. "And I shouldn't dare to give him such messages. How do I know what they would mean to him? Why, my dear, you may meet some young man to-morrow, any day. You may want to marry him. What do you think Osmond would feel, if you wrote and told him that?"
"Why," said Rose, in a pained surprise, "you haven't understood, after all. But he will understand. No, don't tell him anything, grannie, only that I'll write to him every mail and that I shall come home. He will believe me. Now I must go and pack."
But grannie held her anxiously.