The incident of that evening had a very disturbing effect upon the family at Bonport. Little Amy, waking next morning much astonished to find herself in Rosalind’s room, and very faintly remembering what had happened, was subjected at once to questionings more earnest than judicious--questionings which brought everything to her mind, with a renewal of all the agitation of the night. But the child had nothing to say beyond what she had said before--that she had dreamed of mamma, that mamma had called her to come down to the lake, and be taken home; that she wanted to go home, to go to mamma--oh, to go to mamma! but Rosalind said she was dead, and Sophy said they were never, never to see her again. Then Amy flung herself upon her sister’s breast, and implored to be taken to her mother. “You don’t know how wicked I was, Rosalind. Russell used to say things till I stopped loving mamma--oh, I did, and did not mind when she went away! But now! where is she, where is she? Oh, Rosalind! oh, Rosalind! will she never come back? Oh, do you think she is angry, or that she does not care for me any more? Oh, Rosalind, is she dead, and will she never come back?” This cry seemed to come from Amy’s very soul. She could not be stilled. She lay in Rosalind’s bed, as white as the hangings about her, not much more than a pair of dark eyes looking out with eagerness unspeakable. And Rosalind, who had gone through so many vicissitudes of feeling--who had stood by the mother who was not her mother with so much loyalty, yet had yielded to the progress of events, and had not known, in the ignorance of her youth, what to do or say, or how to stand against it-- Rosalind was seized all at once by a vehement determination and an intolerable sense that the present position of affairs was impossible, and could not last. “Oh, my darling!” she cried; “get well and strong, and you and I will go and look for her, and never, never be taken from her again!” “But, Rosalind, if mamma is dead?” cried little Amy. The elder people who witnessed this scene stole out of the room, unable to bear it any longer. “It must be put a stop to,” John Trevanion said, in a voice that was sharp with pain. “Oh, who can put a stop to it?” cried Mrs. Lennox, weeping, and recovering herself and weeping again. “I should not have wondered, not at all, if it had happened at first; but, after these years! And I that thought children were heartless little things, and that they had forgot!” “Can Russell do nothing, now you have got her here?” he cried with impatience, walking up and down the room. He was at his wits’ end, and in his perplexity felt himself incapable even of thought.