[Illustration: BEFORE ROSE WAS AWAKE MRS. DAMEREL CAME INTO HER ROOM.] been haunted. Rose heard her come up-stairs, and thought with a little bitterness as she lay awake, her pillow wet with the tears which she never shed in the daylight, of her mother’s triumph over her, and how all this revolution was her work. She heard something like a sigh as her mother passed her door, and wondered almost contemptuously what she could have to sigh about, for Rose felt all the other burdens in the world to be as nothing in comparison with her burden; as, indeed we all do. Next morning, however, before Rose was awake, Mrs. Damerel came into her room in her dressing-gown, with her hair, which was still so pretty, curling about her shoulders, and her face lit up with a wonderful pale illumination like a northern sky. “What is it?” cried Rose, springing up from her bed. “Rose,” said Mrs. Damerel, gasping for breath, “we are rich again! No! it is impossible--but it is true; here it is in this letter--my uncle Ernest is dead, and he has left us all his money. We are richer than ever I was in all my life.” Rose got up, and ran and kissed her mother, and cried, with a great cry that rang all over the house, “Then I am free!” CHAPTER XIII. There is no such picturesque incident in life as the sudden changes of fortune which make a complete revolution in the fate of families or individuals without either action or merit of their own. That which we are most familiar with is the change from comfort to poverty, which so often takes place, as it had done with the Damerels, when the head of a house, either incautious or unfortunate, goes out of this world, leaving not only sorrow but misery behind him, and the bereavement is intensified by social downfall and all the trials that accompany loss of means. But for the prospect of Mr. Incledon’s backing up, this would have implied a total change in the prospects and condition of the entire household, for all hope of higher education must have been given up for the boys; they must have dropped into any poor occupation which happened to be within their reach, with gratitude that they were able to maintain themselves; and as for the girls, what could they do, poor children, unless by some lucky chance of marriage? This poor hope would have given them one remaining chance not possible to their brothers; but, except that, what had they all to look forward to? This was Mrs. Damerel’s excuse for urging Rose’s unwilling consent to Mr. Incledon’s proposal. But lo! all this was changed as by a magician’s wand. The clouds rolled off the sky, the sunshine came out again, the family recovered its prospects, its hopes, its position, its freedom, and all this in a moment. Mrs. Damerel’s old uncle Edward had been an original who had quarrelled with all his family. She had not seen him since she was a child, and none of her children had seen him at all--and she never knew exactly what it was that made him select her for his heir.