then go before they speak together. It will be better done without my being by. Don't you think so ?"
"Yes."
"We know we have done right, Rosa?"
"Yes."
"We know we are better so, even now?"
"And shall be far, far, better so, by-and-bye."
Still, there was that lingering tenderness in their hearts towards the old positions they were relinquishing, that they prolonged their parting. When they came among the elm trees by the cathedral, where they had last sat together, they stopped, as by consent, and Rosa raised her face to his, as she had never raised it in the old days;— for they were old already.
"God bless you, dear! Good-bye!"
"God bless you, dear! Good-bye!"
They kissed each other, fervently.
"Now, please take me home, Eddy, and let me be by myself."
"Don't look round, Rosa," he cautioned her, as he drew her arm. through his, and led her away. "Didn't you see Jack?"
"No! Where?"
"Under the trees. He saw us, as we took leave of each other. Poor fellow! he little thinks we have parted. This will be a blow to him, I am much afraid!"
She hurried on, without resting, and hurried on until they had passed under the Gate House into the street; once there, she asked:
"Has he followed us? You can look without seeming to. Is he behind?"
"No. Yes! he is! He has just passed out under the gateway. The dear sympathetic old fellow likes to keep us in sight. I am afraid he will be bitterly disappointed!"
She pulled hurriedly at the handle of the hoarse old bell, and the gate soon opened. Before going in, she gave him one last wide wondering look, as if she would have asked him with imploring emphasis: "O! don't you understand?" And out of that look he vanished from her view.
CHAPTER XIV.
WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
Christmas Eve in Cloisterham. A few strange faces in the streets; a few other faces, half strange and half familiar, once the faces of Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and women who come back from the outer world at long intervals to find the city wonderfully shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any means well in the meanwhile. To these, the striking of the cathedral clock, and the cawing of the rooks from the cathedral tower, are like voices of their nursery time. To such as these, it has happened in their dying hours afar off, that they have
