She would have given him her head had he asked for it, and the lock was soon severed from the rest and laid in his hand. Holding it to the light he said, “Look how long, and bright, and even it is. You have beautiful hair, Rossie.”
He meant to divert her mind, but her heart was very sore, and her face tear-stained and wet as she tied the hair with a bit of ribbon, and placing it in a paper, handed it to him.
“Thank you, Rossie,” he said; “no man ever had a dearer sister than I, and if I am ever anything, it will be wholly owing to your influence and Bee’s.”
At the mention of Bee’s name Rossie looked quickly up, struck with a sudden idea.
“Oh, Mr. Everard,” she said, “how can you go away and leave Miss Beatrice? and I thought you and she would some time be married, and we should all be so happy.”
“That can never be,” Everard replied; “Beatrice will not have me; I cannot have her. We settled that to-night, but are the best of friends, and I esteem her as one of the noblest girls I ever knew. You may tell her so if she ever speaks of me after I am gone; tell her that with you she represents to me all that is purest and sweetest in womanhood; and now, Rossie, I must say good-by. It is almost two o’clock.”
He took her upturned face between both his hands and held it a moment, while he looked earnestly into the clear, bright eyes which met his without a shadow of consciousness, except the consciousness that he was going away, and this was his farewell. Then he stooped and kissed her forehead and said, “God bless you, Rosamond; be a daughter to my father. You are all the child he has now.”
An hour later and Rosamond had cried herself to sleep, and did not hear Everard’s cautious footsteps, as, with his satchel in his hand, he stole down the stairs and out to the carriage-house, where he passed the few remaining hours of the November night, feeling that he was indeed an outcast and a wanderer.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NEXT DAY.
