Suddenly her frown of perplexity cleared away.  “I know what has happened,” she said, with a nod to Sylvia.  “I know exactly what has happened.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Wilton’s and Miss Pamela’s aunt Susan has died, and they’ve got the money.  They have been waiting for it ever since I have been with them.  Their aunt was over ninety, and it did begin to seem as if she would never die.”

“Was she very rich?”

“Oh, very; millions; and she never gave a cent to Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela.  She has died, and they have just made up their minds to go away.  They have always said they should live abroad as soon as they were able.”  Rose looked a little troubled for a moment, then she laughed.  “They kept me as long as they needed me,” said she, with a pleasant cynicism, “and I don’t know but I had lived with them long enough to suit myself.  Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela were always nice to me, but sometimes—­well, sometimes I felt so outside them that I was awfully lonesome.  And Mrs. Wilton always did just what you knew she would, and so did Miss Pamela, and it was a little like living with machines that were wound up to do the right thing by you, but didn’t do it of their own accord.  Now they have run down, just like machines.  I know as well as I want to that Aunt Susan has died and left them her money.  I shall get a letter to-morrow telling me about it.  I think myself that Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela will get married now.  They never gave up, you know.  Mrs. Wilton’s husband died ages ago, and she was as much of an old maid as Miss Pamela, and neither of them would give up.  They will be countesses or duchesses or something within a year.”

Rose laughed, and Sylvia beamed upon her.  “If you feel that you can stay here,” she said, timidly.

“If I feel that I can,” said Rose.  She stretched out her slender arms, from which the lace-trimmed sleeves of her night-gown fell away to the shoulder, and Sylvia let them close around her thin neck and felt the young cheek upon her own with a rapture like a lover’s.

“Those folks she lived with in New York are going to Europe to-morrow,” she told Henry, when she was down-stairs again, “and they have treated that poor child mean.  They have never told her a word about it until now.  She says she thinks their rich aunt has died and left them her money, and they have just cleared out and left her.”

“Well, she can stay with us as long as she is contented,” said Henry.

“I rather guess she can,” said Sylvia.

Henry regarded her with the wondering expression which was often on his face nowadays.  He had glimpses of the maternal depths of his wife’s heart, which, while not understanding, he acquiesced in; but there was something else which baffled him.

But now for Sylvia came a time of contentment, apparently beyond anything which had ever come into her life.  She fairly revelled in her possession of Rose, and the girl in her turn seemed to reciprocate.  Although the life in East Westland was utterly at variance with the life she had known, she settled down in it, of course with sundry hitches of adjustment.  For instance, she could not rid herself at first of the conviction that she must have, as she had always had, a maid.