to find herself unable to break. It was her pride to consider herself
a hard young person, without spirituality, without sentiment, yet all
her personal relationships were to be of the fantastic kind she now
experienced, all her obligations such as others would have ignored.

'We shall know more when John Gibbs brings the afternoon milk,'
Caroline said.

Rose went upstairs and left her stepsisters to their repetitions. Her
window looked out on the little walled front garden and the broad
street. Tradesmen's carts went by without hurry, ladies walked out
with their dogs, errand-boys loitered in the sun, and presently
Caroline and Sophia went down the garden path, Caroline sailing
majestically like a full-rigged ship, Sophia with her girlish,
tripping gait. They put up their sunshades, and sailed out on what
was, in effect, a foraging expedition. They were going to collect the
news.

Outside the gate, they were hidden by the wall, but for a little while
Rose could hear Caroline's loud voice. Without doubt she was talking
of Francis Sales, unless she were asking Sophia if her hat, a large
one with pink roses, really became her. Rose knew it all so well, and
she closed her eyes for a moment in weariness. Suddenly she felt tired
and old; the flame of her anger had died down, and for that moment she
allowed herself to droop. She found little comfort in the fact that
she alone knew of her folly, and calling it folly no longer justified
it. She, too, had been rejected, more cruelly than had Francis Sales,
for she had given him something of her spirit. And she had liked to
imagine him far away, thinking of her and of her beauty; she had
fancied him remembering the scene among the primroses and continuing