"Is it really, really true?" she questioned, shaking the drops from her face.
"Go, and see for yourself, Rose."
"But he might awake, he might know."
"That an angel is in his room? Well, it will do him no harm, nor you either."
Lady Rose looked down at the flowers that lay scattered around her, and gathered them into the muslin of her dress again. She was smiling, now, yet trembling from head to foot. Would he know her? Would the perfume of her flowers awaken some memory in his mind of the days when they had made play-houses in the thickets, and pelted each other with roses, in childish warfare? How cold and distant he had been to her of late! Would he awake to his old self? Would she ever be able to approach him again without that miserable shrinking sensation?
"Sir Noel," she said, "I think my own father would never have been so kind to me as you are."
"I am glad you think so, child, for that was what I promised him on his death-bed. That and more, which God grant I may be able to carry out."
"I cannot remember him," said Lady Rose, shaking her head, as if weary with some mental effort.
"No; he left us when you were a little child. But we must not talk of this now."
"I know! I know! Just a moment since I was in such haste. Now I feel like putting it off. Isn't it strange?"