And yet when Rosalind went out next morning she was able to withdraw herself, in a way inconceivable to any one who has not been young and full of imaginations, from the miseries and terrors of the night. Mr. Trevanion was much exhausted, but living, and in his worn-out, feeble state required constant care and nursing, without being well enough to repay that nursing with abuse, as was his wont. Rosalind, with no one to turn to for companionship, went out and escaped. She got clear of that small, yet so important, world, tingling with emotion, with death and life in the balance, and everything that is most painful in life, and escaped altogether, as if she had possessed those wings of a dove for which we all long, into another large and free and open world, in which there was a wide, delightful air which blew in her face, and every kind of curiosity and interest and hope. How it was she fell to thinking of the curious fact that she had not, and had never had, a lover, at such a moment, who can tell? Perhaps because it occurred to her at first that it would be well to have something, somebody, to escape to and take comfort in, when she was so full of trouble, without knowing that the wide atmosphere and fresh sky and bare trees, that discharged, whenever the breath of the wind touched them, a sharp little shower of rain-drops, were enough at her age to woo her out of the misery which was not altogether personal, though she was so wound up in the lives of all the sufferers. She escaped. That thought about the lover, which was intended to be pathetic, beguiled her into a faint laugh under her breath; for indeed it was amusing, if even only ruefully amusing, to be so unlike the rest of the young world. That opened to her, as it were, the gate; and then her imagination ran on, like the lawless, sweet young rover it was, to all kinds of things amusing and wonderful. Those whose life is all to come, what a playground they have to fly into when the outside is unharmonious! how to fill up all those years; what to do in the time that is endless, that will never be done; how to meet those strange events, those new persons, those delights and wonders that are all waiting round the next and the next corner! If she had thought of it she would have been ashamed of herself for this very amusement, but fortunately she did not think of it, and so let herself go, like the child she was. She took her intended walk through the park, and then, as the morning was bright, after lingering at the gate a little, went out into the road, and turned to the village without any particular intention, because it was near and the red roofs shone in the light. It was a fresh, bright morning, such as sometimes breaks the dulness of November. The sky was as blue as summer, with wandering white cloudlets, and not a sign of any harm, though there had been torrents of rain the night before. Indeed, no doubt it was the pouring down of those torrents