It was of all this that Jenny was thinking that dreary afternoon; and when at last she turned away from the window, her thoughts went back again to her sister, and she murmured, “If she could only live.”

But it could not be;—­the fiat had gone forth, and Rose, like the fair summer flower whose name she bore, must fade and pass away.  For several days after Mrs. Russell’s party she tried to keep up, but the laws of nature had been outraged, and now she lay all day in a darkened room, moaning with pain, and wondering why the faces of those around her were so sad and mournful.

“Jenny,” said she one day when the physician, as usual, had left the room without a word of encouragement—­“Jenny, what does make you look so blue and forlorn.  I hope you don’t fancy I’m going to die?  Of course I’m not.”

Here a coughing fit ensued, and after it was over, she continued, “Isn’t George Moreland expected soon?”

Jenny nodded, and Rose proceeded, “I must, and will be well before he comes, for ’twill never do to yield the field to that Howard girl, who they say is contriving every way to get him,—­coaxing round old Aunt Martha, and all that.  But how ridiculous!  George Moreland, with his fastidious, taste, marry a pauper!” and the sick girl’s fading cheek glowed, and her eyes grew brighter at the absurd idea!

Just then Mr. Lincoln entered the room.  He had been consulting with his wife the propriety of taking Rose to her grandmother’s in the country.  She would thus be saved the knowledge of his failure, which could not much longer be kept a secret; and besides that, they all, sooner or later, must leave the house in which they were living; and he judged it best to remove his daughter while she was able to endure the journey.  At first Mrs. Lincoln wept bitterly for if Rose went to Glenwood, she, too, must of course go and the old brown house, with its oaken floor and wainscoted ceiling, had now no charms for the gay woman of fashion who turned with disdain from the humble roof which had sheltered her childhood.

Lifting her tearful eyes to her husband’s face, she said “Oh, I can’t go there.  Why not engage rooms at the hotel in Glenwood village.  Mother is so odd and peculiar in her ways of living, that I never can endure it,” and again Mrs. Lincoln buried her face in the folds of her fine linen cambric, thinking there was never in the world a woman as wretched as herself.

“Don’t, Hatty, don’t; it distresses me to see you feel thus.  Rooms and board at the hotel would cost far more than I can afford to pay, and then, too,—­” here he paused, as if to gather courage for what he was next to say; “and then, too, your mother will care for Rose’s soul as well as body.”

Mrs. Lincoln looked up quickly, and her husband continued, “Yes, Hatty, we need not deceive ourselves longer.  Rose must die, and you know as well as I whether our training has been such as will best fit her for another world.”