Without a moment’s pause, Grayson rushed down the two pair of shaking stairs to the lower lobby. She found the street-door closed, and while she was attempting to open it—which in her haste she did not quickly accomplish—she heard the woman who occupied the room below the attic, come out and ascend the stairs; and a moment after, her voice sounded from the upper landing, calling to some one below—“Pray come up, quick! I think the sick man is dead! Where is the girl? Can no one find her, to come to her father?” Grayson waited to hear no more, but hastily quitting the house, ran as fast as her feet could move down the little street. Just as she turned the corner, she encountered Rosalie, who started and turned pale, and Grayson thought looked suspiciously at her; but she carried the bundle of roses hidden under her cloak, and so she passed on unquestioned. Rosalie, too—though with a heart filled with dark misgivings—went quickly on her homeward way, to find, alas! those misgivings more than realized in the new misfortunes which there awaited her. CHAPTER IV. As Rosalie ascended the stairs to the attic, she heard, through the half-open door of a room which she passed, the words—“He is dead, and the girl is away.” Every syllable fell like a bolt of ice upon her heart, for to whom could they refer except to her father and herself? She paused not to think or question; fear, agony—every terrible emotion had lent wings to her feet, she flew upward like a hunted bird, one dreadful thought impelling her onward till she reached the bedside of her father. Around it stood two or three females, tenants of the house, gazing on the rigid, cold form, pale as marble, which, with closed eyes and motionless hands lay extended before them. With a cry of anguish that would have pierced the most stony heart, Rosalie sprang forward, and laying her now burning cheek on the cold one of her father’s, and casting her soft arms around his neck, she called to him in accents, whose tender pathos none could hear unmoved; she implored him to speak to his own Rosalie; to come back from death, and live for her who had none to live for but him. She mingled passionate and broken prayers with her adjurations, that God would restore her dear father again to her; and while she prayed, warm tears fell like summer rain upon the pale face against which her sweet one rested, and like the grateful dews upon the faded herbage, they did indeed recall the departing from the gates of death, to the consciousness of his daughter’s warm embrace and loving kiss. She felt at last the beating of his heart beneath the pressure of her small hand, his respiration feebly fanned her cheek, his closed eyelids quivered; and while her soul bowed down in thankfulness, they were upraised with a beaming look of love, which sent its light and joy into her sinking heart.