It contained a set of the Bayfield drawings exquisitely cut in stone; and within the cover was wrapped a lighter parcel addressed to Miss Dorothea Westcote--a rose-tree, with a packet of seeds tied about its root.
No letter accompanied the gift, at the sentimentality of which she found herself able to smile.

But she soaked the root carefully in warm water, and smiled again at herself, as she planted it at the foot of the glacis beneath her boudoir window--the very spot where Raoul had fallen.

Against expectation--for the journey had sorely withered it-- the plant throve.

She lived to see it grown into a fine Provence rose, draping the whole south-east corner of Bayfield with its yellow bloom.
"After all," she said one afternoon, stepping back in the act of pruning it, "provided one sees things in their right light and is not a fool--" But this was long after the time of which we are telling.
Folks no longer smile at sentiment.

They laugh it down: by which, perhaps, no great harm would be done if their laughter came through the mind; but it comes through the passions, and at the best chastises one excess by another--a weakness by a rage, which is weakness at its worst.