“Meet the hard things of life as bravely—­” Maurice’s face grew hot.  “You wouldn’t have thought there was any good in that.”  The touch of scorn in Rosalind’s tone stung as he recalled it.  He turned the leaves and began to read.

It was a pleasure to look at the large clear type; he soon became interested.

Half an hour later Katherine’s voice broke in upon the Forest of Arden.  “Maurice, Maurice, what are you doing?  Mother sent me to find you.”

“I am reading.  Don’t bother, please,” was the reply, in a tone so far removed from melancholy that Katherine, reassured, obediently retired.

CHAPTER SIXTH.

Puzzles.

“How weary are my spirits!”

Up to this time life had been a simple and joyous matter to Rosalind.  She had known her own small trials and perplexities, but her father or Cousin Louis were always at hand to smooth out tangles and show her how to be merry over difficulties.  Now all was different.  There were puzzles on every side and no one to turn to.

The house behind the griffins was not exactly a cheerful place.  Rosalind found herself stealing about on tiptoe lest she disturb the silence of the spacious rooms.  She hardly ventured to more than peep into the drawing-room, where Miss Herbert’s liking for twilight effects had full sway.  There was a pier table here, supported by griffins, the counterpart in feature of those on the doorstep, which she longed to examine, but the shades were always drawn and the handsome draperies of damask and lace hung in such perfect folds she dared not disturb them.

Where was the charm of her father’s stories of Friendship?  Was it because her grandfather was dead that everything had changed?  This was why her grandmother wore black dresses and added that heavy veil when she went out.  Rosalind once drew a corner of it over her own face and the gloom appalled her.

She ventured to say one day as they drove along a pleasant country road, “Grandmamma, you don’t know how bright the sunshine is,” and Mrs. Whittredge replied, “I do not wish to know, Rosalind; nothing can ever again be bright to me.”  Yet if she would only look, she must see that it was bright.  This was one puzzle.

Aunt Genevieve’s manner was another.  It was as if she scorned everything, and sometimes it made Rosalind almost angry.

On the day of her meeting with Maurice, she ate her lunch with a glance every few minutes at her great-uncle Allan on the opposite wall.  A very black portrait, it seemed only a meaningless blur till in a certain light the strong face and stern eyes shone out of the surrounding gloom with startling effect.  She sometimes wondered rather anxiously if the uncle to whose home-coming she looked forward, could by any possibility be like the person for whom he was named.  It was not an agreeable face, yet it drew her gaze with an irresistible attraction.  She was convinced that on occasion the heavy brows contracted and the eyes grew even sterner.