So it was not wonderful that Rodney should have found a new mystery in her; nor that, seeing in her look, sometimes—­especially when it was not meeting his own—­the reflections of a thousand experiences he had not shared with her, he should have felt that she was a long way off.  And his heart ached for the old Rose, whom he had so completely “surrounded”—­the Rose who had consulted him about the menus for her dinners, who had brought him all her little troubles; who had tried—­bless her!—­to study law, and had stolen into court to hear his argument, so that she could talk with him.  Whatever the future might have for him, it would never bring that Rose back.

The arrival of the twins, in the convoy of a badly flustered—­and, to tell the truth, a somewhat scandalized—­Miss French, simplified the situation a little—­by complicating it!  They absolutely enforced a routine.  They had needs that must be met on the minute.  And they gave Rose and Rodney so many occupations that the contemplation of their complicated states of mind was much abridged.

But even her babies brought Rose a disappointment along with them.  From the time of the receipt of Miss French’s telegram acknowledging Rodney’s and telling them what train she and the twins would take, Rose had been telling off the hours in mounting excitement.  The two utterly adorable little creatures, as the pictures of them in Rodney’s pocketbook showed them to be, who were, miraculously—­incredibly—­hers, were coming to bring motherhood to her; a long-deferred payment for the labor and the agony with which she had borne them; the realization of half-forgotten hopes that had, during the period of her pregnancy, been the mainstay of her life.  There was now no Mrs. Ruston, no Harriet, no plausible physician to keep them away from her.  Rose had a smile of tender pity for the memory of the girl who had struggled so ineffectually and yet with such heart-breaking earnestness to break the filaments of the web they’d spun around her.

No, it wouldn’t be like that now.  Rodney had agreed explicitly that Miss French was to be allowed to stay only as long as Rose wanted her; only for the few days—­or hours—­she would need for making herself mistress of their regime.  Then the nurse was to be sent away on a vacation and Rose should have her children to herself.

She didn’t go to Boston with Rodney to meet them; nor even to the station; stayed in the cottage, ostensibly to see to it, up to the very last minute, that the fires were right (June had come in cold and rainy) and in general to be ready on the moment to produce anything that their rather unforeseeable needs might call for.  Her real reason was a shrinking from having her first meeting with them in the confusion of arrival on a station platform, under the eyes of the world, amid the distractions of things like luggage.

Rodney understood this well enough, and arriving at the cottage, he clambered out of the wagon with them and carried them both straight in to Rose, leaving the nurse and the bewildering paraphernalia of travel for a second trip.