leading into the wide, uncertain world and the sight of Rose, all
cream and black, was like a secret portal leading to a winding stair.
At this hour, romance was in the house, beckoning Henrietta to follow
through that gate or down that stair, but chiefly hovering about the
figure of Rose who sat so straight and kept so silent, her white hands
moving slowly, the pearls glistening on her neck, her face a pale oval
against the darkness. She was never more mysterious or more remote;
with her even the common acts of eating and drinking seemed, to
Henrietta, to be made poetical; she was different from everybody else,
but the girl felt vaguely that the wildness of which Caroline made a
boast and which never developed into more than that, the wildness
which had ruined her father's life, lay numbed and checked somewhere
behind the amazing stillness and control of Rose. And she was like a
woman who had suffered a great sorrow or who kept a profound secret.

It was at this hour, when Henrietta was half awed, half soothed, yet
very much alive, feeling that tremendous excitements lay in wait for
her just outside, when she was wrapped in beauty, fed by delicate
food, sensitive to the slim old silver under her hands, that she
sometimes felt herself actually carried back to the boarding-house,
and she saw the grimy tablecloth, the flaring gas jets, the tired worn
faces, the dusty hair of Mrs. Banks and the rubber collar of Mr.
Jenkins, and she heard little Miss Stubb uttering platitudes in her
attempt to raise the mental atmosphere. There was a great clatter of
knives and forks, a confusion of voices and, in a pause, the sound of
the exclusive old gentleman masticating his food.

Then Henrietta would close her eyes and, after an instant, she would
open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose,
the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia;