The children’s rooms were in their usual twilight, the faint little night-lamp in its corner, the little sleepers breathing softly in the gloom. Rosalind placed herself unconsciously out of sight from the door, sitting down behind Johnny’s bed, though without any intention by so doing of hiding herself. If it were possible that any visitor from the unseen came to the child’s bed, what could it matter that the watcher was out of sight? She sat down there with a beating heart in the semi-darkness which made any occupation impossible, and after a while fell into the thoughts which had come prematurely to the mother-sister, a girl, and yet with so much upon her young shoulders. The arrival of her uncle brought back the past to her mind. She thought of all that had happened, with the tears gathering thick in her eyes. Where was _she_ now that should have had these children in her care? Oh, where was she? would she never even try to see them, never break her bonds and claim the rights of nature? How could she give them up--how could she do it? Or could it be, Rosalind asked herself--or rather did not ask herself, but in the depths of her heart was aware of the question which came independent of any will of hers--that there was some reason, some new conditions, which made the breach in her life endurable, which made the mother forget her children? The girl’s heart grew sick as she sat thus thinking, with the tears silently dropping from her eyes, wondering upon the verge of that dark side of human life in which such mysteries are, wondering whether it were possible, whether such things could be?