"Not until our return to New York city. My grandfather was in a fine state; kept the telegraph wires at work between West Point and New York, until he got some clew to her, and then, without waiting for the closing exercises at the military academy, he hurried me back to the city. We found the missing woman at St. L——'s hospital, where she had been conveyed after having been found in an unconscious condition in the ladies' room of the railway depot. She was better, and we brought her away to the hotel. The Dean of Olivet went to Newport, and Mrs. Stillwater recovered her spirits. A few days later she married Mr. Rockharrt at the church where the dean had preached. You know everything else about the matter. And now, Uncle Fabian, tell me that woman's story, or at least all that is proper for me to know of it."
"Cora, you read Rose Stillwater aright. She did on both these occasions fly from before the face of the Dean of Olivet. I will tell you all about her, for it is now right that you should know; but you must promise never to reveal it."
"I promise."
CHAPTER XXI.
WHO WAS ROSE FLOWERS?
"Well, my dear Corona, I must ask you to cast your thoughts back to that year when you first came to Rockhold to live, and engrossed so much of your grandmother's time and attention that your grandfather grew jealous and impatient, and commissioned me to 'hire' a nursery governess to look after you and teach you the rudiments of education. You remember that time, Cora?" inquired Mr. Fabian, as he held the reins with a slackened grasp, so that the horse jogged slowly along the wooded road between the foot of the mountain and the banks of the river, under the star-lit sky.
"I remember perfectly," answered the girl.
"Well, business took me to New York about that time, and I thought it a good opportunity to hunt up a governess for you. So I advertised in the New York papers, giving my address at an uptown office, while my own business kept me down town.
"The first letter I opened interested me so much that I gave my whole attention to that first, and so it happened that I had no occasion to touch the others. It was from one Ann White, who described herself as a motherless and fatherless girl of sixteen, a stranger in this country, who was trying to get employment as assistant teacher, governess, or copyist, and who was well fitted to take sole charge of a little girl seven years old.