In the black gowns that she chose to wear for her benefactress, and with that shade of pathos on her exquisite face, she was very charming, and she soon had friends and admirers by the dozens; but she did not encourage any. Her life at The Crags had made her shy and timid; she did not feel as if she had any real friends among all those who sought her now. She liked best to make friends with the beautiful, restless sea, to sit on the sands and listen to its mystical roar, to sport among the rolling billows, or sail over its bosom, drinking in deep drafts of exhilarating air that brightened her sorrowful eyes and planted fresh roses on her pale cheeks. It was so new and strange and delightful to the mountain-bred girl that it drew her thoughts away from the past to present scenes and joys. She tried to put Laurie and Lelia out of her mind, not to envy the happiness that must be theirs when they had become friendly again. “And, oh, dear Heaven, make her repent her sins; make her a better woman, so that she shall be worthy the noble husband she has won,” prayed Rosalind every night before she laid her dark head down upon its pillow to rest. Her life was very lonely, poor Rosalind; it had always been so empty of love that her one little glimpse of it in Laurie Willoughby’s eyes had seemed like paradise. Oh, those brief, bright hours of hope and joy while she had worn his beautiful ring! How they returned to her over and over, with their zest and sweetness! How she wondered even now what wonderful good fortune he had wished for her when he placed it on her hand! Even now that he was married to Lelia, she would have liked to know, but she was too timid to ask him. She would never, never know, unless of his own free will he volunteered the information. Very likely he had forgotten all about it by now. Lelia, with her love and her beauty, would make him forget everything in the world. Ah, well, perhaps she, too, might forget after a while, she told herself, trying to still that dull, aching pain in her heart. Perhaps by and by some other young man almost as noble and handsome as Laurie Willoughby--not quite, that could not possibly be--might come into her life and teach her a new lesson of love, filling her starved heart with the fulness of content and happiness. Meanwhile, she would make the best of the new opportunities Miss Willoughby had generously thrown into her life. She would read and study, she would try to make some true friends for herself, she would travel and see the beautiful world over, which she had always yearned. She did not see that she need to be entirely unhappy, even though the one man she would have chosen for her lover was lost to her forever. Yet day by day she would trace his name beside her own on the wet sands with the tip of her parasol, and sigh as she murmured: “Laurie and Rosalind! How well they look together!” Then the white surf rolling in would blot the names away, and she would sigh to herself: