“Dear little Rossie!” he thought; “if I were free, I believe I’d say yes,—not for the money, but for all she will be when she gets older.” And then there crept over him again that undefinable sense of something lost which he had felt when Rossie said to him, “I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money.”
He was growing greatly interested in Rossie, and found himself very impatient during the last few hours of his journey. What had been done in his absence, he wondered, and was she more reconciled to the fortune which had been thrust upon her, and how would she receive him, and how would she look? She was not handsome, he knew, and yet her face was very, very sweet; her eyes were beautiful, and so was the wavy, nut-brown hair, which she wore so becomingly in her neck,—and at the thought of her hair there came a great lump in Everard’s throat as he remembered the sacrifice the unselfish girl had made for him two years before.
“In all the world there is no one like little Rossie,” he said to himself, and felt his heart beat faster with a thrill of anticipation as the train neared Rothsay and stopped at last at the station.
Taking his valise, which was not heavy, he started at once for the Forrest House, which he reached just as it was growing dark, and the gas was lighted in the dining-room.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE NEW LIFE AT ROTHSAY.
His first impulse was to ring like any stranger at a door not his own, but thinking to himself, “I will not wound her unnecessarily,” he walked into the hall, and, depositing his satchel and hat upon the rack, went to the dining-room, the door of which was ajar, so that the first object which met his view as he entered was Rossie, standing under the chandelier, but so transformed from what she was when he last saw her, that he stood for an instant wondering what she had done; for, instead of a child in short frock and white aprons, with loose flowing hair, he saw a young woman in a long black dress, with her hair twisted into a large, flat coil, and fastened with a comb.
The morning after Everard’s departure Rossie had gone with Beatrice to order a black dress, which she insisted should be made long. “I am through with short clothes now,” she said to Beatrice. “I feel so old since I did that shameful thing, that for me to dress like a child would be as absurd as for you to do it. I am not a child. I am at least a hundred years old, and you know, it would never do for an heiress to be dressed like a little girl. How could I discuss business with my lawyer in short clothes and bibs,” and she laughed hysterically as she tried to force back her tears.
She had become convinced that for a few years she must submit to be the nominal owner at least of the Forrest property, and she had made up her mind to certain things from which she could not be turned. One was long dresses, and she carried her point, and gave orders concerning some minor details with a quiet determination which astonished Bee, who had hitherto found her the most pliable and yielding of girls. The dress had been sent home on the very afternoon of Everard’s arrival, and without a thought of his coming, Rossie shut herself in her room, and began the work of transformation, first by twisting up her flowing hair, which added, she thought, at least two years to her appearance, though she did not quite like the effect, it was so unlike herself. But the long dress was a success, and she liked the sound of the trailing skirt on the carpet, and looked at herself in the glass more than she had ever done before in her life at one time, and felt quite satisfied with the tout ensemble when she at last went down to the dining-room, where she was standing when Everard came in.
She had been very lonely during his absence, and she was wondering where he had gone, and when he would return, when the door in the hall opened, and he was there before her.