Rosa had listened with downcast eyes, but now she looked up earnestly and said, “That is a very kind judgment, Mrs. Bright, and I thank you for the lesson.”

“It is a just judgment,” replied their sensible hostess.  “I often tell Mr. Bright we cannot be too thankful that we were brought up to wait upon ourselves and earn our own living.  You will please to excuse me now, ladies, for it is time to prepare tea.”

As she closed the door, Rosa pressed her sister’s hand, and sighed as she said, “O, this is dreadful!”

“Dreadful indeed,” rejoined Flora.  “To think of him as he was when I used to make you blush by singing, ‘Petit blanc! mon bon frere!’ and then to think what an end he came to!”

The sisters sat in silence for some time, thinking with moistened eyes of all that had been kind and pleasant in the man who had done them so much wrong.

CHAPTER XXX.

IF young Fitzgerald had not been strongly inclined to spend the summer in Northampton, he would have been urged to it by his worldly-minded mother and grandfather, who were disposed to make any effort to place him in the vicinity of Eulalia King.  They took possession of lodgings on Round Hill in June; and though very few weeks intervened before the college vacation, the time seemed so long to Gerald, that he impatiently counted the days.  Twice he took the journey for a short visit before he was established as an inmate of his grandfather’s household.  Alfred Blumenthal had a vacation at the same time, and the young people of the three families were together almost continually.  Songs and glees enlivened their evenings, and nearly every day there were boating excursions, or rides on horseback, in which Mr. and Mrs. King and Mr. and Mrs. Blumenthal invariably joined.  No familiarity could stale the ever fresh charm of the scenery.  The beautiful river, softly flowing in sunlight through richly cultivated meadows, always seemed to Mr. Blumenthal like the visible music of Mendelssohn.  Mr. King, who had been in Germany, was strongly reminded of the Rhine and the Black Forest, while looking on that wide level expanse of verdure, with its broad band of sparkling silver, framed in with thick dark woods along the river-range of mountains.  The younger persons of the party more especially enjoyed watching Mill River rushing to meet the Connecticut, like an impatient boy let loose for the holidays, shouting, and laughing, and leaping, on his way homeward.  Mrs. Delano particularly liked to see, from the summit of Mount Holyoke, the handsome villages, lying so still in the distance, giving no sign of all the passions, energies, and sorrows that were seething, struggling, and aching there; and the great stretch of meadows, diversified with long, unfenced rows of stately Indian corn, rich with luxuriant foliage of glossy green, alternating with broad bands of yellow grain, swayed by the breeze like rippling waves of the sea.