“Father, you will go to Rosville, and be rich again.  Can you buy this house from Ben, for me?  A very small income will suffice me and Fanny, for you may be sure that I shall keep her.  Temperance will live with Verry; Ben will build, now that his share of his grandfather’s estate will come to him.”

“Very well,” he said with a sigh, “I will bring it about.”

“It is useless for us to disguise the fact—­I have lost you.  You are more dead to me than mother is.”

“You say so.”

It was the truth.  I was the only one of the family who never went to Rosville.  Aunt Merce took up her abode with Alice, on account of Arthur, whom she idolized.  When father was married again, the Morgeson family denounced him for it, and for leaving Surrey; but they accepted his invitations to Rosville, and returned with glowing accounts of his new house and his hospitality.

By the next June, Ben’s house was completed and they moved.  Its site was a knoll to the east of our house, which Veronica had chosen.  Her rooms were toward the orchard, and Ben’s commanded a view of the sea.  He had not ventured to intrude, he told her, upon the Northern Lights, and she must not bother him about his boat-house or his pier.  They were both delighted with the change, and kept house like children.  Temperance indulged their whims to the utmost, though she thought Ben’s new-fangled notions were silly; but they might keep him from something worse.  This something was a shadow which frightened me, though I fought it off.  I was weary of trouble, and shut my eyes as long as possible.  Whenever Ben went from home, and he often drove to Milford, or to some of the towns near, he came back disordered with drink.  At the sight my hopes would sink.  But they rose again, he was so genial, so loving, so calmly contented afterward.  As Verry never spoke of it either to Temperance or me, I imagined she was not troubled much.  She could not feel as I felt, for she knew nothing of the Bellevue Pickersgill family history.

The day they moved was a happy one for me.  I was at last left alone in my own house, and I regained an absolute self-possession, and a sense of occupation I had long been a stranger to.  My ownership oppressed me, almost, there was so much liberty to realize.

I had an annoyance, soon after I came into sole possession.  Father’s business was not yet settled, and he came to Surrey.  He was paying his debts in full, he told me, eking out what he lacked himself with the property of Alice.  He could not have used much of it, however, for the vessels that were out at the time of the failure came home with good cargoes.  I fancied that he had more than one regret while settling his affairs; that he missed the excitement and vicissitudes of a maritime business.  Nothing disagreeable arose between us, till I happened to ask him what were the contents of a box which had arrived the day before.

“Something Alice sent you; shall we open it?”