When Reginald had closed and locked his door and mechanically thrown himself on a sofa, he lay there for some time—not thinking, yet not unconscious. The room had been quite shut up, and the bud, now half opened, had filled the air with its exquisite fragrance. He sensed this fragrance, and, in the half stupor which had come to him, he felt the presence of tender, soothing hands passing, not over his head, but near the very brain substance within his head. His mind seemed reëchoing the speech he had made about Petrarch’s Laura, on which he had prided himself. And as it repeated itself, there were withdrawn all gross elements, until the spiritualized worship which Petrarch had for his paragon of true virtue, seemed to enswathe his being with a heavenly marvel of pure love. A mellifluous rapture of mind, all separate from the senses, overflowed his highest being; and then, as clearly as ever he felt the sun’s rays, he felt his own mother’s presence, and knew, or thought he knew, that he was falling down and down serenely into her care, with an ecstasy of the annihilation of self, and all self-burdens. * * * * * The next morning Mrs. Mancredo took an early breakfast, and then stayed in the parlor a while, looking about. She breakfasted three times that morning, and then asked if any one had seen Mr. Grove. It was discovered that no one had. Then Mrs. Mancredo, remembering how he had groped up stairs, followed the matter through. The result was, they found him insensible in his room, and one glance at him told it was no inebriate’s sleep. CHAPTER III. A partial paralysis had befallen Reginald Grove. At his first stage of consciousness, Mrs. Mancredo noticed that when a servant in clearing the room took up the withered rosebud, his heavy gaze followed it. She replaced it, and then bending over him said: “Do you want to see her?” The eagerness of his attempt to respond showed his wish. Mrs. Mancredo ordered her carriage for a drive past the gardens of the town, on the lookout for moss roses. “She must be a widow,” she was saying to herself, when her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a rosebush, much beaten down on the side next the house-steps; and on the other, in the full glory of its mossy beauty. “Turn round, John, and go slowly back, and then come to this spot and on, till I tell you to stop.” As they passed the house the second time, Mrs. Mancredo had a good view of the roses, and of a young woman whose every nervous motion meant purpose, watering the bush. Mrs. Mancredo stopped the carriage and descended. On approaching Miss Daksha she looked at her steadily a moment, and then presented her card. “I came—I came to look at your moss roses, and to talk about them. What has happened to this bush?” she said abruptly. “It has been abused.” “Did you ever live on a farm?” said Mrs. Mancredo then, after a long pause.