“And you can bring out your two daughters, and present them at court.”
“Yes, I might do that.”
“Very well.”
Had the earl felt disposed to look about him for a wife, he might have found a suitable one in Baden-Baden.
There were many of the English nobility and gentry staying there for the benefit of the baths. Many very attractive young ladies of rank were in the matrimonial market. But, to tell the truth, the invalid earl, either from real ill health or from hypochondria, was very shy of strangers, and better liked to stroll, or ride, or drive with “the children,” as he called his nieces and their young friend, than to linger in the parlors of the hotel or the pavilions of the place.
In their rambles Odalite seldom joined them. She preferred to stay with her suffering father, and share the labors of her mother in the sick room. The earl and the three younger girls usually set out together.
Wynnette and Elva walking on before; the earl, with little Rosemary’s hand clasped in his own, followed behind.
Ever since that day, now more than a year ago, when the reunited members of the Force family met at Baden-Baden, and paired off—Mr. and Mrs. Force on one sofa, Odalite and Le on another, and Wynnette and Elva on the window seat, leaving the earl, as it were, “out in the cold,” and quite forgotten, and little Rosemary, also temporarily forgotten, had drawn a hassock to the side of his easy chair and sat down and laid her little curly black head on his knee, in silent sympathy—ever since that day the earl and the child had been fast friends. In her tender little heart she pitied him for his weakness and illness, just as she might have pitied any poor man in any rank of life, and she had fallen into a habit of silent sympathy with him, and of drawing her hassock to the side of his chair, when they were all indoors, and of taking his hand when they were out walking. Even now, when the invalid had recovered health, strength and spirits, these habits of the child, once formed, were not easily to be broken. She no longer pitied him, because she saw that he was no longer an object of pity; but she drew her hassock to his side indoors, and took his hand and walked with him outside. She seemed to think that he belonged to her, or she to him, or they to each other.
One day they were sauntering slowly through the grounds of the Conversation-Haus. Wynnette and Elva were flitting on before them.
Rosemary’s hand was—not on the earl’s arm—but in his hand. He was so very much taller than the girl that he led her like a child.