The evening passed heavily; their hearts were full of uncertainty.
"We miss our merry, spirited companion," said the baroness with a grim look at Rose.

Both young ladies assented with ludicrous eagerness.
That night Rose came and slept with Josephine, and more than once she awoke with a start and seized Josephine convulsively and held her tight.
Accused of egoism! at first her whole nature rose in arms against the charge: but, after a while, coming as it did from so revered a person, it forced her to serious self-examination.

The poor girl said to herself, "Mamma is a shrewd woman.

Am I after all deceiving myself?
Would she be happy, and am I standing in the way ?" In the morning she begged her sister to walk with her in the park, so that they might be safe from interruption.
There, she said sadly, she could not understand her own sister.

"Why are you so calm and cold, while am I in tortures of anxiety?
Have you made some resolve and not confided it to your Rose ?" "No, love," was the reply; "I am scarce capable of a resolution; I am a mere thing that drifts." "Let me put it in other words, then.