een replenished too; and, well-fed and well-dressed, Rose
began to look almost like the sparkling, piquant Rose of other days.

The Dantons had been three weeks in Paris, and were to leave in a day or
two en route for Switzerland. The Doctor had taken them for a last drive
through the Bois de Boulogne the sunny afternoon that was to be their
last for some time in the French capital. Kate and Rose, looking very
handsome, and beautifully dressed, lay back among the cushions,
attracting more than one glance of admiration from those who passed by.

Mrs. Danton was chatting gayly with her husband, and Rose, poising a
dainty azure parasol, looked at the well-dressed Parisians around her.

Suddenly, the hand so daintily holding the parasol grasped it tight, the
hot blood surged in a torrent to her face, and her eyes fixed and
dilated on two equestrians slowly approaching. A lady and gentleman--the
lady a Frenchwoman evidently, dark, rather good-looking, and not very
young; the gentleman, tall, eminently handsome, and much more youthful
than his fair companion, Rose Stanford and her false husband were face
to face!

He had seen them, and grown more livid than death; his eyes fixed on
Doctor Danton and his beautiful wife, talking and laughing with such
infinitely happy faces.

One glance told him how matters stood--told him the girl he had forsaken
was the happy wife of a better man. Then his glance met that of his
wife, pretty, and blooming and bright as when he had first fallen in
love with her; but those hazel eyes were flashing fire, and the pretty
face was fierce with rage and scorn.

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 bac