Then they were past; and Reginald Stanford and his wife had seen each other for the last time on earth.
The summer flew by. They visited Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and were back in Paris in October. About the middle of that month they sailed from Havre to New York, and reached that city after a delightful passage. It being Rose's first sight of the Empire City, they lingered a week to show her the lions, and early in November were on the first stage of their journey to Danton Hall.
CHAPTER XXV.
AT HOME.
Late in the afternoon of a dark November day our travellers reached St. Croix, and found the carriage from the Hall awaiting them at the station. Rose leaned back in a corner, wrapped in a large shawl, and with a heart too full of mingled feelings to speak. How it all came back to her, with the bitterness of death, the last time her eyes had looked upon these familiar objects—how happy she had been then, how hopeful; how miserable she had been since, how hopeless now. The well-known objects flitted before her eyes, seen through a mist of tears, so well-known that it seemed only yesterday since she had last looked at them, and these dreary intervening months only a wretched dream. Ah! no dream, for there sat the English nurse with the baby in her arms, a living proof of their reality. One by one the old places spun by, the church, the presbytery, with Father Francis walking up and down the little garden, his soutane tucked up, and his breviary in his hand, all looking ghostly in the dim afternoon light. Now the village was passed, they were flying through wide open gates, and under the shadow of the dear old trees. There was Danton Hall, not the dingy, weather-beaten Danton Hall she knew, but a much more modern, much more elegant mansion; and there on the gray stone steps stood her father, handsome and portly, and kindly as ever; and there was Grace beside him—dear, good Grace; and there was Eeny, dressed in pale pink with fluttering ribbons, fair and fragile, and looking like a rosebud. A little group of three persons behind, at sight of whom Kate uttered an exclamation of delight.
"Oh, Frank! there are Harry and Agnes! To think papa never told us! What a charming surprise!"
That was all Rose heard; then she was clasped in her father's stalwart arms, and sobbing on his breast. They all clustered around her first—their restored prodigal—and Grace kissed her lovingly, and Eeny's soft arms were around her neck. Then the group in the background came forward, and Rose saw a sunburned sailor's face, and knew that it was her brother Harry who was kissing her, and her sister Agnes whose arms clung around her. Then she looked at the third person, still standing modestly in the background, and uttered a little cry.
"Jules! M. La Touche!"