“Yes: go, go; Rose will stay with me instead,” said Mr. Damerel. He put out his hot hand and drew the girl towards him, who almost resisted, so stupefied was she. “Do not be long, Martha,” he said to his wife; and before Rose could realize what had happened she found herself in her mother’s chair, seated in the shaded stillness near the sick-bed, while Mrs. Damerel’s step going softly along the passage outside testified to the bewildering fact that it was she who was to receive the visitors. It was so sudden, so totally different from her expectations, so cruel a disappointment to her, that the girl sat motionless, struck dumb, counting the soft fall of her mother’s steps, in the stupor that fell upon her. Her father said something, but she had not the heart to answer. It seemed incredible, impossible. After ten minutes or so, which seemed to Rose so many hours, during which she continued to sit dumb, listening to her father’s stirrings in his restless bed and the pattering of the rain, the same maid came to the door again and handed in a little scrap of paper folded like a note. She opened it mechanically. It was from Mrs. Wodehouse. “Dear Rose, dearest Rose, come and bid my boy good-by, if it is only for a moment,” it said. She put it down on the table, and rose up and looked at her father. “If only for a moment,”--he was not so ill that any harm could happen to him if he were left for a moment. He did not look ill at all, as he lay there with his eyes closed. Was he asleep?--and surely, surely for that moment she might go! While she looked at him, her heart beating wildly, and something singing and throbbing in her ears, he opened his eyes. “What is it?” he said. “It is--oh, papa I may I go for one moment--only for a moment--I should come back directly; to bid--poor--Mr. Wodehouse good-by?” “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” said the rector, with perhaps unintentional profaneness, smiling at her a smile which seemed to make Rose wild. He put out his hand again and took hers. “Never mind poor Mr. Wodehouse,” he said; “he will get on very well without you. Stay with me, my Rose in June; to see you thus does me good.” “I should only stay one moment.” Her heart beat so that it almost stifled her voice. “No, my darling,” he said, coaxingly; “stay with me.” And he held her hand fast. Rose stood gazing at him with a kind of desperation till he closed his eyes again, holding her tightly by the wrist. I think even then she made a little movement to get free--a movement balked by the closer clasping of his feverish fingers. Then she sat down suddenly on her mother’s chair. The pulsations were in her ears like great roars of sound coming and going. “Very well, papa,” she said, with a stifled voice.