during her father's illness. There had been a going and coming of
her maid, a thumping about of boxes, an ordering of four-wheelers; it
appeared to old Mrs. Tramore that something of the objectionableness,
the indecency, of her granddaughter's prospective connection had
already gathered about the place. It was a violation of the decorum
of bereavement which was still fresh there, and from the indignant
gloom of the mistress of the house you might have inferred not so
much that the daughter was about to depart as that the mother was
about to arrive. There had been no conversation on the dreadful
subject at luncheon; for at luncheon at Mrs. Tramore's (her son never
came to it) there were always, even after funerals and other
miseries, stray guests of both sexes whose policy it was to be
cheerful and superficial. Rose had sat down as if nothing had
happened--nothing worse, that is, than her father's death; but no one
had spoken of anything that any one else was thinking of.

Before she left the house a servant brought her a message from her
grandmother--the old lady desired to see her in the drawing-room.
She had on her bonnet, and she went down as if she were about to step
into her cab. Mrs. Tramore sat there with her eternal knitting, from
which she forebore even to raise her eyes as, after a silence that
seemed to express the fulness of her reprobation, while Rose stood
motionless, she began: "I wonder if you really understand what
you're doing."

"I think so. I'm not so stupid."

"I never thought you were; but I don't know what to make of you now.
You're giving up everything."