t. There were puzzles on
every side and no one to turn to.

The house behind the griffins was not exactly a cheerful place. Rosalind
found herself stealing about on tiptoe lest she disturb the silence of the
spacious rooms. She hardly ventured to more than peep into the
drawing-room, where Miss Herbert's liking for twilight effects had full
sway. There was a pier table here, supported by griffins, the counterpart
in feature of those on the doorstep, which she longed to examine, but the
shades were always drawn and the handsome draperies of damask and lace
hung in such perfect folds she dared not disturb them.

Where was the charm of her father's stories of Friendship? Was it because
her grandfather was dead that everything had changed? This was why her
grandmother wore black dresses and added that heavy veil when she went
out. Rosalind once drew a corner of it over her own face and the gloom
appalled her.

She ventured to say one day as they drove along a pleasant country road,
"Grandmamma, you don't know how bright the sunshine is," and Mrs.
Whittredge replied, "I do not wish to know, Rosalind; nothing can ever
again be bright to me." Yet if she would only look, she must see that it
was bright. This was one puzzle.

Aunt Genevieve's manner was another. It was as if she scorned everything,
and sometimes it made Rosalind almost angry.

On the day of her meeting with Maurice, she ate her lunch with a glance
every few minutes at her great-uncle Allan on the opposite wall. A very
black portrait, it seemed only a meaningless blur till in a certain light
the strong face and stern eyes shone out of the surrounding gloom with
startling effect. She sometimes wondered rather anxiously if the uncle to
whose home-coming she looked forward, could by any possibility be like the
person for whom he was named. It was not an agreeable face, yet it drew
her gaze with an irresistible attraction. She was convinced that on
occasion the heavy brows contracted and the eyes grew even sterner.

In the next panel hung Matilda, his wife, as the massive marble in the
cemetery said,--a youthful person with side curls and a comfortable smile.

Even with its southern windows the dining room was sombre in its massive
furnishings of Flemish oak. Very different from the one at home, with its
sunshine and flowers, its overflow of books from the study, and the odds
and ends of pottery picked up by father and Cousin Louis in their travels.

Rosalind