It was only the _Maison de Sante_ and the incidents connected with it which had any power to excite or even interest her. With regard to everything else, except Everard, she was silent and indifferent, asking no questions, and even taking Beatrice’s marriage as a matter of course, and never offering a comment upon it. But when at last America was in sight and they were coming up the harbor, she roused from her apathy and went up on deck with the others, and sat in her chair, with a bright flush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes which made them as bright as stars. She was looking for Everard, and trying to make him out in the group of men waiting on the distant wharf for the boat. “I must tell her,” Bee thought; and sitting down beside her, she said: “Darling, I know you expect Everard to meet you, but he is not here. He did not even know we were going for you, and we would not tell him for fear we might fail, and then he would feel worse than ever. But he is in Rothsay, and will be so glad to get his dear little girl once more. Don’t cry,” she added, as the great tears gathered in Rossie’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “We meant it for the best, and you shall see him soon, very soon. We will go on to-night, if you think you can bear it. Are you strong enough?” “Yes, go on,—quick,—fast, just as we came through Europe. I want to see Everard,” Rossie whispered, and so they went on that night in the express which left for Pittsburg, from which city a telegram was forwarded to Lawyer Russell, to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Morton would be in Rothsay on the late train. CHAPTER LI. BREAKING THE NEWS AT THE FORREST HOUSE. A wild storm was sweeping over Southern Ohio that November night, and nowhere was it wilder or more violent than in Rothsay, where the rain fell in torrents, and ere it reached the ground was taken up by the wind and driven in blinding sheets through the deserted streets. But wild as the storm was in the village, it seemed wilder still in the vicinity of the Forrest House, which fairly shook on its solid foundations with the force of the tempest. Tree after tree was blown down, shrubs were uprooted, and the fanciful summer-house which the doctor had erected on the spot where Rossie used to tend and water her geraniums and fuchsias, went crashing down, a heap of ruins, while within, in the most costly and elegant chamber, a fiercer storm was raging between a soul trying to free itself from its prison walls of clay and the body which struggled so hard to retain it.