in Europe a year, perhaps longer.  I wish very much to see you all; and Eulalia might well consider me a very impolite acquaintance, if I should go without saying good by.  If you do not return to Boston before we sail, I will, with your permission, make a short call upon you in Northampton.  I thank Rose-mother for her likeness.  It will be very precious to me.  I wish you would add your own and another; for wherever my lot may be cast, you three will always be among my dearest memories.”

“I am glad of this arrangement,” said Mr. King.  “At their age, I hope a year of separation will prove sufficient.”

The Rose-mother covered the wound in her heart, and answered, “Yes, it is best.”  But the constrained tone of the letter pained her, and excited her mind to that most unsatisfactory of all occupations, the thinking over what might have been.  She had visions of her first-born son, as he lay by her side a few hours before Chloe carried him away from her sight; and then there rose before her the fair face of that other son, whose pretty little body was passing into the roses of Provence.  Both of them had gone out of her life.  Of one she received no tidings from the mysterious world of spirits; while the other was walking within her vision, as a shadow, the reality of which was intangible.

Mr. King returned to Boston with his family in season for Gerald to make the proposed call before he sailed.  There was a little heightening of color when he and Eulalia met, but he had drilled himself to perform the part of a polite acquaintance; and as she thought she had been rather negligently treated of late, she was cased in the armor of maidenly reserve.

Both Mr. and Mrs. King felt it to be an arduous duty to call on Mrs. Fitzgerald.  That lady, though she respected their conscientiousness, could not help disliking them.  They had disturbed her relations with Gerald, by suggesting the idea of another claim upon his affections; and they had offended her pride by introducing the vulgar phantom of a slave son to haunt her imagination.  She was continually jealous of Mrs. King; so jealous, that Gerald never ventured to show her the likeness of his Rose-mother.  But though the discerning eyes of Mr. and Mrs. King read this in the very excess of her polite demonstrations, other visitors who were present when they called supposed them to be her dearest friends, and envied her the distinguished intimacy.

Such formal attempts at intercourse only increased the cravings of Rosa’s heart, and Mr. King requested Gerald to grant her a private interview.  Inexpressibly precious were these few stolen moments, when she could venture to call him son, and hear him call her mother.  He brought her an enamelled locket containing some of his hair, inscribed with the word “Gerald”; and she told him that to the day of her death she would always wear it next her heart.  He opened a small morocco case, on the velvet lining of which lay a lily of delicate silver filigree.