Now I do hope you won't be too much surprised, dear, and I don't want you to disapprove. I suppose you know that Mr. Flood sent over his yacht, the Esperanza, so that it would be ready for Kiel. But perhaps you don't know that he told Marshall to make use of it until he wanted it himself. Well, he did; it was nice of him, wasn't it? So Marshall brought it to Algiers, and the Whartons—and I—saw a good deal of him. It is all over now, so I may as well confess that Marshall and I were very unhappy for a time. We didn't have five thousand a year between us! But when I got your letter, and the papers—and the note from the bank—oh, Rosamund, you will never, never know how the world changed for me. And we were married yesterday, at the American Consulate in Lisbon, and I am your happy, happy, happy sister,
CECILIA PENDLETON.
Rosamund held the letter to her heart, when she had read it; it was all just as she had hoped. She wondered what Ogilvie would say—but that could wait!
The last letter was in Eleanor's handwriting.
MY OWN DEAR ROSE:
Your letter told me nothing that I was not prepared for. But I don't know how to put into words even a small part of my hopes for you. John is—excepting my own dear husband—the best man in the world. You will be happy, and proud, as I am happy and proud; we both send our love, and wish we might be with you on that beautiful morning that is coming so soon. But we cannot, for almost as soon as we get back to New York from this lovely Columbia Valley we shall have to sail for Europe. So we can only send our love, my darling; and Timmy is sending something else by express.
I am so happy that I cannot help wondering whether this is really myself; yet ever and always, sweet, I know that I am I—YOUR ELEANOR.
Rosamund had kept that letter to read last; and as she folded it back into its envelope there were tears in her eyes, so that for a moment she did not see the familiar figure of a white horse, that was coming upon her with the gentle ambling trot that White Rosy fell into when her master was in one of his absent-minded moods. It was a sort of up-and-downness of a trot, one of Rosy's great achievements. Ogilvie always said that it was worthy of everyone's admiration, since it made a remarkably good effect with the minimum of effort.
When she had come up to the place where Rosamund waited, White Rosy stopped of her own accord, edged toward the side of the road, and began to nibble at the young green things already burgeoning there.
Ogilvie looked, without speaking, at the girl waiting for him at the roadside. She was not smiling, yet her whole look seemed a smile. She was standing with her chin uplifted, her eyelids a little drooped; he thought she was the most beautiful thing in all the beauty of the spring-kissed world.