Rosa, having no relation that she knew of in the world, had, from the seventh year of her age, known no home but the Nuns¹’ House, and no mother but Miss Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother was of a pretty little creature like herself (not much older than herself it seemed to her), who had been brought home in her father’s arms, drowned. The fatal accident had happened at a party of pleasure. Every fold and colour in the pretty summer dress, and even the long wet hair, with scattered² petals³ of ruined flowers still clinging to it, as the dead young figure, in its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed⁴ indelibly in Rosa’s recollection. So were the wild despair and the subsequent bowed-down grief of her poor young father, who died broken-hearted on the first anniversary of that hard day.

The betrothal⁵ of Rosa grew out of the soothing⁶ of his year of mental distress⁷ by his fast friend and old college companion, Drood: who likewise had been left a widower⁸ in his youth. But he, too, went the silent road into which all earthly pilgrimages merge⁹, some sooner, and some later; and thus the young couple had come to be as they were.

The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan¹⁰ girl when she first came to Cloisterham, had never cleared away. It had taken brighter hues¹¹ as she grew older, happier, prettier; now it had been golden, now roseate, and now

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