With these rebellious companions, and with all the misery of the family tragedy overshadowing her, Rosalind made the journey more sadly than any of the party. At times it seemed impossible for her to believe that all the miseries that had happened were real. Was it not rather a dream from which she might awaken, and find everything as of old? To think that she should be leaving her home, feeling almost a fugitive, hastily, furtively, in order to cover the flight of one who had been her type of excellence all her life: to think that father and mother were both gone from her--gone out of her existence, painfully, miserably; not to be dwelt upon with tender grief, such as others had the privilege of enduring, but with bitter anguish and shame. The wails of the children as they grew tired with the journey, the necessity of taking the responsibility of them upon herself, hushing the cries of the little ones for “Nana,” silencing Sophy, who was disposed to be impertinent, keeping the weight of the party from the too susceptible shoulders of the aunt, made a complication and interruption of her thoughts which Rosalind was too inexperienced to feel as an alleviation, and which made a fantastic mixture of tragedy and burlesque in her mind. She had to think of the small matters of the journey, and to satisfy Aunt Sophy’s fears as to the impossibility of getting the other train at the junction, and the risk of losing the luggage, and to persuade her that Johnny’s restlessness, his refusal to be comforted by the anxious nursery-maid, and wailing appeals for Russell, would wear off by and by as baby-heartbreaks do. “But I have known a child fret itself to death,” Mrs. Lennox cried. “I have heard of instances in which they would not be comforted, Rosalind; and what should we do if the child was to pine, and perhaps to die?” Rosalind, so young, so little experienced, was overwhelmed by this suggestion. She took Johnny upon her own lap, and attempted to soothe him, with a sense that she might turn out a kind of murderer if the child did not mend. It was consolatory to feel that, warmly wrapped, and supported against her young bosom, Johnny got sleepy, and moaned himself into oblivion of his troubles. But this was not so pleasant when they came to the junction, and Rosalind had to stumble out of the carriage somehow, and hurry to the waiting train with poor little Johnny’s long legs thrust out from her draperies. It was at this moment, as she got out, that she saw a face in the crowd which gave her a singular thrill in the midst of her trouble. The wintry afternoon was falling into darkness, the vast, noisy place was swarming with life and tumult. She had to walk a little slower than the rest on account of her burden, which she did not venture to give into other arms, in case the child should wake. It was the face of the young man whom she had met in the park--the stranger, so unlike anybody else, about whom she had