An expression of intense happiness sat on her beautiful face. This old song, that she was singing to herself in a sweet undertone, was one that her mother used to sing to her when she was a child. The words came from the girl half unconsciously; for, while she sang, she was living over again in thought last night's meeting with Frank Raynor on the Bare Plain. "Rosie!" The fond name, called in her mother's voice, interrupted her. Putting down the saucer she was drying, she advanced to the staircase-door, which opened from the kitchen, and stood there. "Yes, mother! Did you want me?" "Has your father gone out, Rose?" "Yes. He said he should not be long." "Oh no, I dare say not!" crossly responded Mrs. Bell; her tone plainly implying that she put no faith whatever in any promise of the sort. "They'll make a day of it again, as they did yesterday. Bring me a little warm water in half-an-hour, Rose, and I'll get up." "Very well, mother." Rose returned to her tea-cups, and resumed her song; resumed it in very gladness of heart. Ah, could she only have known what this day was designed to bring forth for her before it should finally close, she had sunk down in the blankness of despair! But there was no foreshadowing on her spirit. "'Twas at the dawn of a summer morn, My false love hied away; O'er his shoulder hung the hunter's horn, And his looks were blithe and gay. "'Ere the evening dew-drops fall, my love,' He thus to me, did say, 'I'll be at the garden-gate, my love'-- And gaily he rode away." Another interruption. Some one tried the door--of which Rosaline had a habit of slipping the bolt--and then knocked sharply. Rosaline opened it. A rough-looking woman, miserably attired, stood there: an inhabitant of one of the poorest dwellings in this quarter. "I wants to know," cried this woman, in a voice as uncouth as her speech, and with a dialect that needs translation for the uninitiated reader, "whether they vools o' men be at work to-day." "I think not," replied Rosaline. "There's that man o' mine gone off again to the Golden Shaaft, and he'll come hoam as he did yesternight! What tha plague does they father go and fill all they vools up weth lies about they Whistlers for? That's what I'd like to know. If Bell had heered they Whistlers, others 'ud hev heered they." "I can't tell you anything at all about it, Mrs. Janes," returned Rosaline, civilly but very distantly; for she knew these people to be immeasurably her inferiors, and held them at arm's-length. "You can ask my father about it yourself; he'll be here by-and-by. I can't let you in now; mother's just as poorly as ever to-day, and she cannot bear a noise." Closing the door as she spoke, and slipping the bolt, lest rude Mrs. Janes should choose to enter by force, Rosaline took up her song again.