Collectively,
of course, they clung to their father, whose attitude in the family
group, however, was casual and intermittent. He was charming and
vague; he was like a clever actor who often didn't come to rehearsal.
Fortune, which but for that one stroke had been generous to him, had
provided him with deputies and trouble-takers, as well as with
whimsical opinions, and a reputation for excellent taste, and whist
at his club, and perpetual cigars on morocco sofas, and a beautiful
absence of purpose. Nature had thrown in a remarkably fine hand,
which he sometimes passed over his children's heads when they were
glossy from the nursery brush. On Rose's eighteenth birthday he said
to her that she might go to see her mother, on condition that her
visits should be limited to an hour each time and to four in the
year. She was to go alone; the other children were not included in
the arrangement. This was the result of a visit that he himself had
paid his repudiated wife at her urgent request, their only encounter
during the fifteen years. The girl knew as much as this from her
aunt Julia, who was full of tell-tale secrecies. She availed herself
eagerly of the license, and in course of the period that elapsed
before her father's death she spent with Mrs.
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