She folded up the precious document, and hid it in her pocket. She looked up at the window, but no more sheets of the unfinished letter fluttered out.
"Careless fellow!" she thought, "to leave such tell-tale letters loose. If Kate had found it, or Grace, or Eeny! They could not help understanding it. I wish I dared tell him; but I can't."
She turned and went into the house. No more dreary rambles round the fish-pond. Rose was happy again.
Suicide was indefinitely postponed, and Kate might become the nun, not she. Kate was his promised wife; but there is many a slip; and the second Miss Danton ran up to her room, singing, "New hope may bloom."
If Rose's heart had been broken, she would have dressed herself carefully all the same. There was to be a dinner-party at the house that evening, and among the guests a viscount recently come over to shoot moose. The viscount was forty, but unmarried, with a long rent-roll, and longer pedigree; and who knew what effect sparkling hazel eyes and gold-bronzed hair, and honeyed smiles, might have upon him? So Eunice was called in, and the auburn tresses freshly curled, and a sweeping robe of silvery silk, trimmed with rich lace, donned. The lovely bare neck and arms were adorned with pale pearls, and the falling curls were jauntily looped back with clusters of pearl beads.
"You do look lovely, Miss!" cried Eunice, in irrepressible admiration. "I never saw you look so 'andsome before. The dress is the becomingest dress you've got, and you look splendid, you do!"
Rose flashed a triumphant glance at her own face in the mirror.
"Do I, Eunice? Do I look almost as handsome as Kate?"
"You are 'andsomer sometimes, Miss Rose, to my taste. If Miss Kate 'ad red cheeks, now; but she's as w'ite sometimes as marble."
"So she is; but some people admire that style. I suppose Mr. Stanford does—eh, Eunice?"