“It belonged to uncle’s safe, the one that had so little in it,” she thought. She took it up. Its dull appearance suggested so much dull tragedy to her. “I’ll take it with me,” she thought, and slipped it in the pocket of her dress.
Then she passed down the broad stone steps out once more into the street. Her brief holiday was over. The short hour was almost passed. She clenched her hands together, and drove back the blinding tears that struggled in her eyes. Gradually she drew nearer to the Avenue—how eagerly she had rushed there on the night before! The great black marble mansion came in view, its dusky grandeur having a certain sinister lowering to her understanding eye no different from a prison.
“I wonder when I’ll walk along this street again?” she thought, and ascended the marble steps, hiding all trace of past emotion.
CHAPTER VIII
A BOOK OF INSPIRATION
“The master wished to speak to you when you returned,” the attendant at the door said to her when he answered it.
Rosalie crossed the hall, feeling that vague sense of satisfaction that generally accompanies honesty, and which at times appears so poor a recompense.
This time on knocking she waited for the answer. When it came she opened the door and entered.
Mr. Barringcourt was in the act of filing papers, and generally tidying up the littered table.
“You are quite punctual,” said he. “And what is more, astoundingly honest.”
“You did not expect I should return, then?”