pretending she was not surprised, and a little breathlessly at a loss
what to say.

"I'm Rose Aldrich." She didn't, in words, say, "I'm just Rose Aldrich."
It was the little bend in her voice that carried that impression. "And I
suppose I was--looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly
what you meant by what you said."

Gréville's eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon
the flushed young face; took a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to
the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen
to you.

"_Mon dieu_," she said, "_j'ai grande envie de vous le dire_." She
hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a
ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as
if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess.

"You must forgive me," she said, "if I make my farewells a little soon.
I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater,
and if it is to be done to-day, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a
very pleasant afternoon.--Make your farewells, also, my child," she
concluded, turning to her prisoner, "because you are going with me."

There was something Olympian about the way she did it. The excuse was
made, and the regret expressed in the interest of courtesy, but neither
was insisted on as a fact, nor was seriously intended, it appeared, even
to disguise the fact, which was simply that she had found something
better worth her while, for the moment, than that tea. It occurred to
Rose that there wasn't a woman in town--not even terrible old Mrs.