"Is it really so much as that?" asked Rose.
"Very nearly. I would have looked you up, but in the first place I
have been very little in London, and in the second I believed it
wouldn't have done any good."
"You should have put that first," said the girl. "It wouldn't have
done any good."
He was silent over this a moment, in his customary deciphering way;
but the view he took of it did not prevent him from inquiring, as she
slowly followed her mother, if he mightn't walk with her now. She
answered with a laugh that it wouldn't do any good but that he might
do as he liked. He replied without the slightest manifestation of
levity that it would do more good than if he didn't, and they
strolled together, with Mrs. Tramore well before them, across the
big, amusing piazza, where the front of the cathedral makes a sort of
builded light. He asked a question or two and he explained his own
presence: having a month's holiday, the first clear time for several
years, he had just popped over the Alps. He inquired if Rose had
recent news of the old lady in Hill Street, and it was the only
tortuous thing she had ever heard him say.
"I have had no communication of any kind from her since I parted with
you under her roof.
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