esence with them,
and in their sense of his guardianship brother and sister rested like
children comforted.

The following day was one filled with an atmosphere of disruption and
imminent departure. The very servants caught the contagion and hurried
uncomfortably about their tasks. Corrie's preparations were
unostentatious, but Isabel's agitated the entire household. Also, Mr.
Rose issued his instructions that Flavia should be ready to start for
France on the next steamer sailing. The house that had been rose-colored
within and without was become a gray place to be avoided.

Flavia thought all day of Allan Gerard. She knew her father went in the
afternoon to pay him a farewell visit, she knew Corrie was with him all
the morning, and when each returned home she suspended breath in
anticipation of hearing the step of a guest also--the step of Gerard
coming towards the goal which he had half-showed her in the fountain
arbor. But Corrie and Mr. Rose each entered alone.

Nevertheless, she chose to wear his color, that night; the pale,
glistening tea-rose yellow above which her warm hair showed burnished
gold. He must come that evening, if at all; she would be truly "Flavia
Rose" to him.

She was standing alone before her mirror, setting the last pearl comb in
place, when her cousin came into the room.

"You look as if you were happy enough," Isabel commented fretfully. "I
don't believe you care at all about Corrie's going away. Of course you
don't care about me. What are you putting on that old-fashioned thing
for?"

Flavia gravely turned her large eyes upon the other girl; the unjust
attack fell in harsh dissonance with her own mood of hushed
anticipation. She could not have robed herself for her wedding with more
serious care and earnest thoughtfulness than she had used in preparing
to receive Gerard to-night. This was no time for coquetry; as he came
for her, she would go to him, she knew, without evasion or pretense to
harass his weakness. She shrank, wincing sensitively, from this rough
criticism, but every member of the family had learned not to reply to
the new Isabel's peevish tartness.

"It was my mother's," she explained, to the last inquiry, tenderly
lifting the long chain of pearl and amber beads ending in a lace-fine
pearl cross. Never could she attempt to tell her cousin the blended
motives from which she had chosen to wear this rosary. "And her mother's
and again her's. It is very old Spanish work. Sh