Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/181

Rh Lady Geraldine, a tall woman, who had no fault except pride of race, was sweet to look upon even in the grey autumn of her life. She took a chair by her old friend's side, and laid her hand upon her's.

"You are sad," she said, "and this should not be. To-morrow your son will have reached that manhood for which he was born; he is like a white rose that has unfolded from bud to flower. God grant that his life may be as pure and sweet when the years drop from him like the petals of the rose, leaving him to look back instead of forward."

Lady Osborne raised her head, but did not smile. She looked with a hard, set face through the window into the gathering dusk.

"You are poetical, dear friend," she said, "and who can say your white rose when it comes to bloom may not be a rose at all, but a weed, blown by the winds of fate from some neighbour's garden into yours?"

"You joke, though you still look sad," said Lady Geraldine smiling. "Your rose is a cutting from an old, old tree; he is so like his father, everyday I see it more plainly—his walk, his voice—can you not see the