This question had an ingenuity which led her grandmother to meet it
with a merely provisional and somewhat sketchy answer. "Your
ignorance would be melancholy if your behaviour were not so insane."
"Oh, no; I know perfectly what she'll do!" Rose replied, almost
gaily. "She'll drag me down."
"She won't even do that," the old lady declared contradictiously.
"She'll keep you forever in the same dull hole."
"I shall come and see YOU, granny, when I want something more
lively."
"You may come if you like, but you'll come no further than the door.
If you leave this house now you don't enter it again."
Rose hesitated a moment. "Do you really mean that?"
"You may judge whether I choose such a time to joke."
"Good-bye, then," said the girl.
"Good-bye."
Rose quitted the room successfully enough; but on the other side of
the door, on the landing, she sank into a chair and buried her face
in her hands. She had burst into tears, and she sobbed there for a
moment, trying hard to recover herself, so as to go downstairs
without showing any traces of emotion, passing before the servants
and again perhaps before aunt Julia. Mrs. Tramore was too old to
cry; she could only drop her knitting and, for a long time, sit with
her head bowed and her eyes closed.
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