Rosalind did not seem to care for the title or prerogative of “housekeeper” so long as she was her father’s companion. Together they had made a plan for a garden entirely encircling the house, where even the shady corners should be forced to yield bloom, but this scheme was laid away until another season, because the Professor seemed to feel an ever increasing weariness now that the harness had been laid aside and there was no real necessity for exertion. No, there was one thing more,—there was still a volume of critical essays, prepared for the work of the university, to go to press. Rosalind begged her father to wait for a while and rest, but when he still persevered, she, too, threw herself into the work, that was completed at midsummer. Then came a month of golden days, yet through them ran a thrill as of coming harm that Rosalind felt, but could not formulate; her father clung to her more closely than ever, but when she glanced up at him, instead of meeting a quick response as of old, his eyes seemed fixed upon something in the far-away horizon. One day when father dropped in for a friendly rather than a professional call, he found the Professor alone,—in itself quite an unusual happening,—his face drawn and white with pain, hand pressed to side, and then together they faced the inevitable as they had done twice before. It might be months hence or even a year or two, or it might be any day, such is _angina’s_ subtle cruelty. “Shall I tell Rosalind?” asked father; “it is best that she should know.” “The time has come at last, then, when I can no longer stand between her and sorrow,” said the Professor, scanning father’s face with a piteous clinging to hope that was heartbreaking. “No, John,” replied father, taking the hands that were fast becoming veined and transparent, between his own; “the time has come when you may no longer stand between her and either sorrow or love, for one is born of the other, and it is not in the plan of God or nature that she be spared; but if in her love for you she has learned to keep the windows open wide to the sun of things, you will not have failed in your hope.” “Then all may yet be well with her,” he said slowly, making an evident effort to steady his voice, while at the same time as he glanced out of the window near which they sat, his pained expression changed to one of complete content, and, following his gaze, father looked into the upturned face of Rosalind, who stood below, her mother’s wonderful violet eyes flashing greeting between their long lashes, her arms filled with the crimson, gold, and sapphire glory of late September—boughs of swamp maple, pepperidge, birch, candelebra of fringed gentian, and smoke of seeded clematis.