“‘There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days.’
These are our morning days, Rosalie.”
“Yes, and the morning hours of them,” she agreed. “Since I knew I was to leave to-day I felt I could not waste the time in sleeping. I wanted—oh! how I wanted—how I have dreamed of seeing the sun rise in this canyon! Perhaps,” she looked at him wistfully, “perhaps it would have been my last sunrise but for you.”
Irving’s heart beat faster, and his jaw set. He could feel again the yielding form that had clung to him.
“No one would have known,” she went on in a dreamy tone. “Even Mr. Derwent would have thought I had disappeared purposely and would have marveled at my ingratitude; but—” her voice changed and she looked up into Irving’s eyes, smiling,—“they might all have talked about me and said critical things, yet Betsy would have believed in me,—believed and suffered. Dear Betsy!”
“How about me? How about the friend of your morning days?” asked Irving.
“Oh, you only began to be that this morning. You would never have given the matter a thought; and even Helen Maynard knows me too slightly to have defended me.”
“Miss Maynard has found a gold-mine in the Yellowstone. Did Mr. Derwent tell you?”
“No, indeed. What do you mean?”