mother--hadn't she mentioned it?--and had been waiting for her. She
thought herself acute in not putting the question of the girl's
seeing him before her as a favour to him or to herself; she presented
it as a duty, and wound up with the proposition: "It's not fair to
him, it's not kind, not to let him speak to you before you go."

"What does he want to say?" Rose demanded.

"Go in and find out."

She really knew, for she had found out before; but after standing
uncertain an instant she went in. "The parlour" was the name that
had always been borne by a spacious sitting-room downstairs, an
apartment occupied by her father during his frequent phases of
residence in Hill Street--episodes increasingly frequent after his
house in the country had, in consequence, as Rose perfectly knew, of
his spending too much money, been disposed of at a sacrifice which he
always characterised as horrid. He had been left with the place in
Hertfordshire and his mother with the London house, on the general
understanding that they would change about; but during the last years
the community had grown more rigid, mainly at his mother's expense.
The parlour was full of his memory and his habits and his things--his
books and pictures and bibelots, objects that belonged now to Eric.
Rose had sat in it for hours since his death; it was the place in
which she could still be nearest to him. But she felt far from him
as Captain Jay rose erect on her opening the door. This was a very
different presence. He had not liked Captain Jay. She herself had,
but not enough to make a great complication of her father's coldness.
This afternoon however she foresaw complications. At the very outset
for instance she was not pleased with his having arranged such a