osanna, on
the first chance the child had slipped away from all she had been told.
She shuddered when she thought of it, remembering her own young sister
and her unhappy fate. She did not realize that she was judging all
humanity by the commonplace young scamp her sister had unfortunately
married. It did not occur to her to ask herself if all the fine young
men and women her son knew were also of that type.

The next thing she knew, the cold woke her. It was dawn, and she had
slept in her chair all night. She was chilled to the bone. She slowly
undressed, and feeling sore and stiff, took a hot bath and wrapped up in
a warm kimono. She was about to lie down and finish the night when she
thought of Rosanna.

Mrs. Horton stepped into a pair of slippers and crossed the room. As
she passed her desk, she looked up full at the picture of her dead son
and his wife, Rosanna's father and mother. She stopped. Somehow those
faces would not let her pass. They held her with sad, questioning eyes.

"What are you doing with our little child?" they seemed to say. "Have
you loved her, mother? Have you been tender with her? Have you tried to
understand her? Have you remembered that she is just a baby?"

Mrs. Horton thought of Rosanna in her beautiful, lonely room way down
the corridor. She commenced to have a very guilty feeling.

"Have you loved her?" asked the two sad faces. "Have you been tender
with her, mother?"

"I have done my duty by the child," answered Mrs. Horton. She went down
the corridor to Rosanna's room, her head held high. The cold, pallid
light of the hour just before day filled the house.

Mrs. Horton opened Rosanna's door and went in. She looked long at the
little bed as though she could not believe her eyes. Then crossing, she
opened the bathroom door, and then the clothespress, calling Rosanna's
name sharply. There was no reply. The little dog followed her into the
room and went sniffing and whining about. Mrs. Horton rushed back to the
bed and saw that the little mound she had thought in the dark the night
before was Rosanna was only a neat pile of little dresses.

Rosanna was gone!

Mrs. Horton remembered that the child was very fond of a wide seat in
the library. She hurried down the broad stairs, expecting to find that
the lonely child had crept down there to sit awhile and, like herself,
had dropped to sleep, but the big room was empty. Mrs. Horton's heart
commenced to hammer in a very strange way. Of