mentioned that this had never been the opinion of all the world. It
was a revelation to Rose that she herself might look a little like
that. She knew however that aunt Julia had not seen her deposed
sister-in-law for a long time, and she had a general impression that
Mrs. Tramore was to-day a more complete production--for instance as
regarded her air of youth--than she had ever been. There was no
excitement on her side--that was all her visitor's; there was no
emotion--that was excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions
more primal. Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan.
It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge,
to explain nor to extenuate. She would leave everything to her
child; with her child she was secure. She only wanted to get back
into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she
treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, a creature of
exaltation, of devotion, but as a new, charming, clever, useful
friend, a little younger than herself. Already on that first day she
had talked about dressmakers. Of course, poor thing, it was to be
remembered that in her circumstances there were not many things she
COULD talk about. "She wants to go out again; that's the only thing
in the wide world she wants," Rose had promptly, compendiously said
to herself. There had been a sequel to this observation, uttered, in
intense engrossment, in her own room half an hour before she had, on
the important evening, made known her decision to her grandmother:
"Then I'll TAKE her out!"

"She'll drag you down, she'll drag you down!" Julia Tramore permitted
herself to remark to her niece, the next day, in a tone of feverish
prophecy.

As the girl's own theory was that all the dragging there might be