“My own, good, kind papa!  Ah! well, come what may, I have lived long enough to be loved.  Yes, dear papa, save me.  I am very young to die; and he loves me so dearly.”

The old man bustled away to put on something warmer for his night walk, and Rosa leaned back, and the tears welled out of her eyes, now he was gone.

Before she had recovered her composure, a letter was brought her, and this was the letter from Christopher Staines, alluded to already.

She took it from the servant with averted head, not wishing it to be seen she had been crying, and she started at the handwriting; it seemed such a coincidence that it should come just as she was sending for him.

My own beloved Rosa,—­I now write to tell you, with a heavy heart, that all is vain.  I cannot make, nor purchase, a connection, except as others do, by time and patience.  Being a bachelor is quite against a young physician.  If I had a wife, and such a wife as you, I should be sure to get on; you would increase my connection very soon.  What, then, lies before us?  I see but two things—­to wait till we are old, and our pockets are filled, but our hearts chilled or soured; or else to marry at once, and climb the hill together.  If you love me as I love you, you will be saving till the battle is over; and I feel I could find energy and fortitude for both.  Your father, who thinks so much of wealth, can surely settle something on you; and I am not too poor to furnish a house and start fair.  I am not quite obscure—­my lectures have given me a name—­and to you, my own love, I hope I may say that I know more than many of my elders, thanks to good schools, good method, a genuine love of my noble profession, and a tendency to study from my childhood.  Will you not risk something on my ability?  If not, God help me, for I shall lose you; and what is life, or fame, or wealth, or any mortal thing to me, without you?  I cannot accept your father’s decision; you must decide my fate.

You see I have kept away from you until I can do so no more.  All this time the world to me has seemed to want the sun, and my heart pines and sickens for one sight of you.

Darling Rosa, pray let me look at your face once more.

When this reaches you I shall be at your gate.  Let me see you, though but for a moment, and let me hear my fate from no lips but yours.—­My own love, your heart-broken lover,

Christopher Staines.

This letter stunned her at first.  Her mind of late had been turned away from love to such stern realities.  Now she began to be sorry she had not told him.  “Poor thing!” she said to herself, “he little knows that now all is changed.  Papa, I sometimes think, would deny me nothing now; it is I who would not marry him—­to be buried by him in a month or two.  Poor Christopher!”

The next moment she started up in dismay.  Why, her father would miss him.  No; perhaps catch him waiting for her.  What would he think?  What would Christopher think?—­that she had shown her papa his letter.