“I am sure Mr. Rivers is frightened, for he has got tears in his eyes,” said the _enfant terrible_. “Well, if they are not tears, it is something that makes your eyes very shiny. You have always rather shiny eyes. And you have never got a chair all this time, Mr. Rivers. Please sit down; for to move about like that worries Aunt Sophy. You are as bad as Rex when he comes home for the holidays. Aunt Sophy is always saying she will not put up with it.” “Child!” cried Mrs. Lennox, with dismay, “what I say to you is not meant for Mr. Rivers. Of course Mr. Rivers is a little excited. I am sure I shall look for the newspapers, and read all the descriptions with twice as much interest. Rosalind, I wish you would go and get some flowers. We have none for the table. You were so busy this morning, you did not pay any attention. Those we have here will do very well for to-day, but for the table we want something fresh. Get some of those fine cactuses. They are just the thing to put on the table for any one who is going to the wars.” “Yes, Aunt Sophy,” said Rosalind, faintly. She saw what was coming, and it frightened, yet excited her. “There is plenty of time. It will do in--half an hour.” “My dear,” said Mrs. Lennox, with an absurd insistence, as if she meant something, “you had better go at once.” “I am nervous, as Sophy has discovered, and can’t keep still,” said Rivers. “May I go too?” Rosalind looked at him, on her side, with a kind of tremulous appeal, as he took her basket out of her hand. It seemed to say “Don’t!” with a distinct sense that it was vain to say so. Aunt Sophy, with that foolish desire to please which went against all her convictions and baffled her own purpose, looked up at them as they stood, Rosalind hesitating and he so eager. “Yes, do; it will cheer you up a little,” the foolish guardian said. And John Trevanion wrote on calmly, thinking nothing. They abandoned her to her fate. It was such a chance as Rivers could not have hoped for. He could scarcely contain himself as he followed her out of the room. She went very slowly, hoping perhaps even now to be called back, though she scarcely wished to be called back, and would have been disappointed too, perhaps. She could not tell what her feelings were, nor what she was going to do. Yet there came before her eyes as she went out a sudden vision of the other, the stranger, he whom she did not know, who had wooed her in the silence, in her dreams, and penetrated her eyes with eyes not bright and keen, like those of Rivers, but pathetic, like little Johnny’s. Was she going to forsake the visionary for the actual? Rosalind felt that she too was going into battle, not knowing what might come of it; into her first personal encounter with life and a crisis in which she must act for herself. “I did not hope for anything like this,” he said, hurriedly; “a good angel must have got it for me. I thought I should have to go without a word.”