Such an eviction from house and home might bring death yet nearer.

To be turned into the road, without shelter--whether justly or unjustly, what could it matter?
-- this would be death itself to the poor creature that lay here.
No, it could not, it should not happen, if she had power to prevent it.
Rotha reached over the bed and put her arms about the head of the invalid and fervently kissed the placid face.

Then the girl's fair head, with its own young face already ploughed deep with labor and sorrow, fell on to the pillow, and rested there, while the silent tears coursed down her cheeks.
"Not if I can prevent it," she whispered to the deaf ears.

But in the midst of her thought for another, and that other Willy's mother as well as Ralph's, like a poisonous serpent crept up the memory of Willy's bitter reproach.

"It was cruel, very cruel." In the agony of her heart the girl's soul turned one way only, and that was towards him whose absence had occasioned this latest trouble.
"Ralph! Ralph!" she cried, and the tears that had left her eyes came again in her voice.
But perhaps, after all, Willy was right.