He added quickly,
vaguely, and with a want of presence of mind of which he as quickly
felt ashamed: "Do none of your family--?" The question collapsed;
the brilliant girl was looking at him.
"We're extraordinarily happy," she threw out.
"Now that's all I wanted to know!" he exclaimed, with a kind of
exaggerated cheery reproach, walking on with her briskly to overtake
her mother.
He was not dining at their inn, but he insisted on coming that
evening to their table d'hote. He sat next Mrs. Tramore, and in the
evening he accompanied them gallantly to the opera, at a third-rate
theatre where they were almost the only ladies in the boxes. The
next day they went together by rail to the Charterhouse of Pavia, and
while he strolled with the girl, as they waited for the homeward
train, he said to her candidly: "Your mother's remarkably pretty."
She remembered the words and the feeling they gave her: they were
the first note of new era. The feeling was somewhat that of an
anxious, gratified matron who has "presented" her child and is
thinking of the matrimonial market. Men might be of no use, as Mrs.
Tramore said, yet it was from this moment Rose dated the rosy dawn of
her confidence that her protegee would go off; and when later, in
crowded assemblies, the phrase, or something like it behind a hat or
a fan, fell repeatedly on her anxious ear, "Your mother IS in
beauty!" or "I've never seen her look better!" she had a faint vision
of the yellow sunshine and the afternoon shadows on the dusty Italian
platform.
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