Full many a rose, the poet tells us, is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness to the desert air. Mr. Trimblerigg’s rose had experienced a somewhat different fate; it may have wasted its sweetness, but it had not blushed altogether unseen; and though it died blushing for itself, it had not lived in vain. The conversion of Caroline to its spiritual significance had proved unimportant; the realization by Mr. Trimblerigg of its extreme inconvenience had made a temporary but not a permanent impression upon him, as further record will show. Davidina had not seen it at all, it had snuffed itself out at the sight of her. But somebody else had seen it, and had realized not merely its spiritual significance, but its potential value, which Mr. Trimblerigg had missed, or too hastily despaired of. And the person in question had seen it not once but twice, on two separate occasions. When Mrs. James told Isabel Sparling that Mr. Trimblerigg was not at home and had already left town, Miss Sparling had either the sense or the instinct not to believe her. And being a determined character, she had hung about at a respectful distance, keeping her eye on the door, rather expecting him to come out of it than to go into it. Muffled in veil and cloak--the former to conceal her bandaged face--she had walked up and down the farther pavement, with her senses alert for the coming or going of that familiar figure, until in the early gathering dusk, the apparition passed her, going with haste along the verge of the pavement in the line of the lamp-lights. Isabel Sparling had this advantage over others who had seen, or doubted that they could have seen, that same mystical appearance in the earlier hours of the day. She was herself a spiritualist and a visionary; she believed in things which the world in general did not, and was on the look-out for them. She had recently, among her other beliefs, become a Second Adventist, and was looking for the end of the world; this event was to be preceded by a great war, by earthquake, by things happening to the sun and moon; by the opening of the seven seals upon a certain box which had recently come into her custody, and by the reappearance of saints from their graves, preparatory to the reappearance of others who were not saints. And for all these things she was already hungrily expectant, when she met a halo walking down the street. It came upon her suddenly round a corner, and had passed before she fully realized that it encircled the head of the man whose false friendship had changed her feelings to enmity. Her intention, in seeking him out and lying in wait for him, had been to return in person the money he had left for her; and though she had meant to thank him for his good services, she had not meant entirely to forgive him, but rather to explore his spiritual condition, and warn him, as she had begun warning the world at large, of the wrath that was to come.