"I will never forsake you, Rotha. I will never be tired. You shall be like my own little sister; for your mother left you in my charge, and you belong to me now, and to nobody else in the world." She accepted it quietly, making no response at all; her violent passion had been succeeded by a gentle, subdued mood. Favourable for saying several things and making sundry arrangements; only that just then was not the time that would do. Both of them remained still and silent, Mr. Digby thinking this among other things; poor Rotha was hardly thinking at all, any more than a shipwrecked man just flung ashore by the waves, and clinging to the rock that has saved him from sweeping out to sea again, lie blesses the rock, maybe, but it is no time for considering anything. The one idea is to hold fast; and Rotha mentally did it, with an intensity of trust and clinging that her protector never guessed at. "Then I must do what you say, now?" she remarked after a while. "I suppose so," he answered, much struck by this tone of docility. "I will try, Mr. Digby." "Will you trust me too, Rotha?" "For what?" "I mean, will you trust me that what I do for you, or want you to do, is the best thing to be done?" Rotha lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him. "What do you want me to do?" she asked. "Nothing, to-day; by and by, perhaps many things. My question was general." "Whether I will trust that what you say is the best?" "Yes." "Mr. Digby, mightn't you be mistaken?" "Rotha, might not you? And would it not be more likely?" Rotha began to reflect that in her past life she had not been wont to give such unbounded trust to anybody; not even to her father, and not certainly to her mother. She had sometimes thought them mistaken; how could she help that? and how could she help it in any other case, if circumstances warranted it? But with the thought of her mother, tears rose again, and she did not speak. Just then Mrs. Cord came in. "O I am glad you are there, sir!" she began. "I wanted to speak to you, if you please." Mr. Digby unclosed his arm from about Rotha, and she withdrew quietly to her former station by the window. The other two went into the adjoining room, and there Mrs. Cord received instruction and information as to various points of the arrangements for the next few days. "And what will I do with Rotha, sir?" she asked finally. "Do with her? In what respect?" "She won't eat, sir." "She will, I fancy, the next time it is proposed to her." "She's very hard to manage," said Mrs. Cord, shaking her head. "She will have her own way, always." "Wel--let her have it." "But other people won't, sir; and I think it's bad for her. She's had it, pretty much, all along; but now--she don't care for what I say, no more'n if I was a post! Nor Mrs. Marble, nor anybody. And is Mrs. Marble going to take her, sir?" "Not at all. Her mother left her in my care."