It was pleasant to see the old man when he received her daily epistles. How daintily he broke the envelope, so as not to injure the little seal, and how fondly he regarded the delicate handwriting. The letters brought happier tidings every day; she was better, she was much better, she was well, she was stronger and rosier than ever, and enjoying herself much. Those letters--long, beautiful letters they were--afforded the old man his chief pleasure now. His home was very desolate while she was away; the house looked changed, the birds sang less joyously, and the flowers were not so fragrant. Every morning he attended to her pets, himself, and then he wandered about the rooms, taking up her books, her papers, and her various little possessions, and examining the contents of her work-basket with childish curiosity. In the twilight he would lean back in his chair, and try to fancy she was in the room with him. Among the shadows, it was easy to imagine her figure, sitting as she used to sit, with drooped head and clasped hands, thinking. At these times, her letter received that morning, was taken from his bosom and kissed, and then the simple, loving old man would go to bed and dream of his grandchild. At length she came home. She rushed into her grandfather's arms with a strange eagerness: it was as if she sought there a refuge from peril; as if she fled to him for succor and comfort in some deep trouble. Poor Rose! she wept so long and so passionately; it could scarce have been all for joy. "Darling! you are not sorry to come home, are you?" "Oh no! so glad, so very, very glad!" and then she sobbed again, so convulsively, that the old man grew alarmed, and as he tried to soothe her into calmness, he gazed distrustfully in her face. Alas! there was a look of deep suffering on her pale features that he had never seen there before; there was an expression of hopeless woe in her eyes, which it wrung his loving heart to behold. "Rose!" he cried, in anguish, "what has happened? you are changed!" She kissed him tenderly, and strove to satisfy him by saying, that it was only the excitement of her return home that made her weep; she would be better the next morning, she said. But she was not better then. From the day of her return she faded away visibly. It was evident, and _he_ soon saw it, that some grief had come to her, which her already weakened frame was unable to bear. He remembered, only too well, that her mother had died of consumption, and when he saw her gradually grow weaker day by day, the hectic on her cheek deepen, and her hands become thin till they were almost transparent, all hope died in his heart, and he could only pray that heaven would teach him resignation, or take him too, when _she_ went.