MRS. MORLAND. Mr. Cameron? Tell us quickly, Mr. Cameron, is it true? CAMERON. It iss true, ma’am. Mr. Blake met us at the gate and he iss with her now. I hurried on to tell you the things necessary. It iss good for her you should know them at once. MRS. MORLAND. Please, quick. CAMERON. You must be prepared to find her--different. MRS. MORLAND. We are all different. Her age---- CAMERON. I mean, Mrs. Morland, different from what you expect. She iss not different as we are different. They will be saying she iss just as she was on the day she went away. (_MRS. MORLAND shrinks._) These five-and-twenty years, she will be thinking they were just an hour in which Mr. Blake and I had left her in some incomprehensible jest. MRS. MORLAND. James, just as it was before! MR. MORLAND. But when you told her the truth? CAMERON. She will not have it. MRS. MORLAND. She must have seen how much older you are. CAMERON. She does not know me, ma’am, as the boy who was with her that day. When she did not recognize me I thought it best--she was so troubled already--not to tell her. MR. MORLAND (_appealing_). But now that she has seen Simon. His appearance, his grey hair--when she saw him she would know. CAMERON (_unhappy_). I am not sure; it iss dark out there. MR. MORLAND. She must have known that he would never have left her and come home. CAMERON. That secretly troubles her, but she will not speak of it. There iss some terrible dread lying on her heart. MR. MORLAND. A dread? MRS. MORLAND. Harry. James, if she should think that Harry is still a child! CAMERON. I never heard what became of the boy. MRS. MORLAND. He ran away to sea when he was twelve years old. We had a few letters from Australia, very few; we don’t know where he is now. MR. MORLAND. How was she found, Mr. Cameron? CAMERON. Two men fishing from a boat saw her. She was asleep by the shore at the very spot where Mr. Blake made a fire so long ago. There was a rowan-tree beside it. At first they were afraid to land, but they did. They said there was such a joy on her face as she slept that it was a shame to waken her. MR. MORLAND. Joy? CAMERON. That iss so, sir. I have sometimes thought---- (_There is a gleeful clattering on the stairs of some one to whom they must be familiar; and if her father and mother have doubted they know now before they see her that MARY ROSE has come back. She enters. She is just as we saw her last except that we cannot see her quite so clearly. She is leaping towards her mother in the old impulsive way and the mother responds in her way, but something steps between them._) MARY ROSE (_puzzled_). What is it? (_It is the years._) MRS. MORLAND. My love. MR. MORLAND. Mary Rose. MARY ROSE. Father. (_But the obstacle is still there. She turns timidly to SIMON, who has come in with her._) What is it, Simon? (_She goes confidently to him till she sees what the years have done with him. She shakes now._) SIMON. My beloved wife.