In the morning came Evan’s great trial.  There stood Rose.  She turned to him, and her eyes were happy and unclouded.

‘You are not changed?’ he said.

‘Changed? what could change me?’

The God of true hearts bless her!  He could hardly believe it.

‘You are the Rose I knew yesterday?’

‘Yes, Evan.  But you—­you look as if you had not slept.’

’You will not leave me this morning, before I go, Rose?  Oh, my darling! this that you do for me is the work of an angel-nothing less!  I have been a coward.  And my beloved! to feel vile is agony to me—­it makes me feel unworthy of the hand I press.  Now all is clear between us.  I go:  I am forgiven.’

Rose repeated his last words, and then added hurriedly: 

’All is clear between us?  Shall I speak to Mama this morning?  Dear Evan! it will be right that I should.’

For the moment he could not understand why, but supposing a scrupulous honesty in her, said:  ‘Yes, tell Lady Jocelyn all.’

‘And then, Evan, you will never need to go.’

They separated.  The deep-toned sentence sang in Evan’s heart.  Rose and her mother were of one stamp.  And Rose might speak for her mother.  To take the hands of such a pair and be lifted out of the slough, he thought no shame:  and all through the hours of the morning the image of two angels stooping to touch a leper, pressed on his brain like a reality, and went divinely through his blood.

Toward mid-day Rose beckoned to him, and led him out across the lawn into the park, and along the borders of the stream.

‘Evan,’ she said, ‘shall I really speak to Mama?’

‘You have not yet?’ he answered.

‘No.  I have been with Juliana and with Drummond.  Look at this, Evan.’  She showed a small black speck in the palm of her hand, which turned out, on your viewing it closely, to be a brand of the letter L.  ’Mama did that when I was a little girl, because I told lies.  I never could distinguish between truth and falsehood; and Mama set that mark on me, and I have never told a lie since.  She forgives anything but that.  She will be our friend; she will never forsake us, Evan, if we do not deceive her.  Oh, Evan! it never is of any use.  But deceive her, and she cannot forgive you.  It is not in her nature.’

Evan paused before he replied:  ’You have only to tell her what I have told you.  You know everything.’

Rose gave him a flying look of pain:  ‘Everything, Evan?  What do I know?’

‘Ah, Rose! do you compel me to repeat it?’

Bewildered, Rose thought:  ‘Have I slept and forgotten it?’

He saw the persistent grieved interrogation of her eyebrows.

‘Well!’ she sighed resignedly:  ‘I am yours; you know that, Evan.’

But he was a lover, and quarrelled with her sigh.

‘It may well make you sad now, Rose.’

’Sad? no, that does not make me sad.  No; but my hands are tied.  I cannot defend you or justify myself; and induce Mama to stand by us.  Oh, Evan! you love me! why can you not open your heart to me entirely, and trust me?’