His voice trembled, he grasped Falcon's cold hand till the latter winced again, and so they parted, and Falcon rode off muttering, “Dr. Staines! so then YOU are Dr. Staines.”
CHAPTER XXII.
Rosa Staines had youth on her side, and it is an old saying that youth will not be denied. Youth struggled with death for her, and won the battle.
But she came out of that terrible fight weak as a child. The sweet pale face, the widow's cap, the suit of deep black—it was long ere these came down from the sickroom. And when they did, oh, the dead blank! The weary, listless life! The days spent in sighs, and tears, and desolation. Solitude! solitude! Her husband was gone, and a strange woman played the mother to her child before her eyes.
Uncle Philip was devotedly kind to her, and so was her father; but they could do nothing for her.
Months rolled on, and skinned the wound over. Months could not heal. Her boy became dearer and dearer, and it was from him came the first real drops of comfort, however feeble.
She used to read her lost one's diary every day, and worship, in deep sorrow, the mind she had scarcely respected until it was too late. She searched in his diary to find his will, and often she mourned that he had written on it so few things she could obey. Her desire to obey the dead, whom, living, she had often disobeyed, was really simple and touching. She would mourn to her father that there were so few commands to her in his diary. “But,” said she, “memory brings me back his will in many things, and to obey is now the only sad comfort I have.”
It was in this spirit she now forced herself to keep accounts. No fear of her wearing stays now; no powder; no trimmings; no waste.
After the usual delay, her father told her she should instruct a solicitor to apply to the insurance company for the six thousand pounds. She refused with a burst of agony. “The price of his life,” she screamed. “Never! I'd live on bread and water sooner than touch that vile money.”