"Don't mention it. Come to me when you need me. You'll find me in
the Red Book."
"It's awfully kind of you."
Mrs. Donovan lingered a moment on the threshold. "Who will you HAVE
now, my child?" she appealed.
"I won't have any one!" Rose turned away, blushing for her. "She
came on speculation," she said afterwards to Mrs. Tramore.
Her mother looked at her a moment in silence. "You can do it if you
like, you know."
Rose made no direct answer to this observation; she remarked instead:
"See what our quiet life allows us to escape."
"We don't escape it. She has been here an hour."
"Once in twenty years! We might meet her three times a day."
"Oh, I'd take her with the rest!" sighed Mrs. Tramore; while her
daughter recognised that what her companion wanted to do was just
what Mrs. Donovan was doing. Mrs. Donovan's life was her ideal.
On a Sunday, ten days later, Rose went to see one of her old
governesses, of whom she had lost sight for some time and who had
written to her that she was in London, unoccupied and ill. This was
just the sort of relation into which she could throw herself now with
inordinate zeal; the idea of it, however, not preventing a foretaste
of the queer expression in the excellent lady's face when she should
mention with whom she was living.
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