Thus urged, Rosalie rose to obey him. The fading light of the short winter day was just deepening into twilight, but a bright ray from the still illuminated west shot through the small window and rested on the poor, shorn rose-tree, crowning it with a rosy smile, as if to comfort it for the loss of its flowers. As she approached it, Rosalie was struck with something strange in its appearance, but the day was waning, and her eyes were dimmed with tears, and so no wonder, she thought, that the objects around should seem distorted; nor was it till she stretched out her hand to pluck the roses that she perceived her lovely tree despoiled of its glorious bloom. Bare, mutilated, unsightly she beheld it; not a bud left to tell of what had been, not a single blossom for the hand of filial love to cast upon the sacred place of the dead. Who could have done this cruel deed? She recollected her rencontre with the woman Grayson—she remembered her guilty look, and the quick, yet stealthy, pace with which she passed her, and to her mind the question was answered beyond a doubt. The coming day was the anniversary of her mother’s death, and must it pass unmarked by the only outward tribute it was in her power to render to her memory? Thought after thought passed through her mind as she stood silent before her desolated tree, but the misfortune was irreparable, and sadly she returned at last to the bedside of her father—he was sleeping calmly, his respiration was free and natural, and the kind neighbor who watched with her, composed her by the assurance that “the fit was over and the morning would find him mending;” still at short intervals he woke, and the same question, “Are they _all_ gone?” was constantly repeated, and then with an imploring tone he would ask for “but one bud, to speak to him of her.” CHAPTER V. Alicia de Rochemont stood, as on the reader’s first introduction to her, before the tall mirror which reflected back her youthful and lovely figure, arrayed as when we before beheld her, yet with more care and precision, for this was the night of the long-expected fancy-ball, and as the Goddess of Flowers, her head was crowned with garlands of living and fragrant roses, her snowy arms were wreathed with them, and the artificial blossoms that had before filled her cornucopia, were replaced by the most delicious flowers of the conservatory, among which roses of snowy whiteness predominated, lending their pearly lustre and exquisite fragrance to the whole.