How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
—Tennyson.
It was later in the afternoon and Master Legros and his daughter had finished their preparations for the return journey. Strangely enough, papa's heart was not as glad as it should have been, considering that the object of his visit to England had been attained, and that he had reached the pinnacle of his desire much more easily than he had ever dared to contemplate, for he had reached it without the cost of humiliation to his child or rebuff to himself.
Nevertheless, the kindly heart was like a dead weight in the good man's breast, even though Rose Marie did her best to seem cheerful, talking ever of the joy of seeing maman again, and at times quite serenely of her own future.
"Thy husband looks kind, Rose Marie," said papa tentatively, whilst his eyes, rendered keen through the intensity of his affection, strove to pierce through the mask of impassiveness wherewith his child tried to hide her thoughts.
"He also seems greatly to admire thee," he added with an involuntary display of paternal pride.
But has any man—has even the most devoted of fathers—ever succeeded in reading a woman's thoughts on the subject of another man.
All that Papa Legros thought at this moment was that Rose Marie looked very pale and that a shiver seemed to go through her as if she had the ague. Mayhap she was over-tired, certainly she was unstrung. He himself felt uncommonly as if he would like to cry.