r the white mask, and hastened on:
"Please don't be afraid to tell me. I do so want you to feel that you
can trust me as Owen does. And you know you mustn't mind if, just at
first, Madame de Chantelle occasionally relapses."

She spoke eagerly, persuasively, almost on a note of pleading. She had,
in truth, so many reasons for wanting Sophy to like her: her love for
Owen, her solicitude for Effie, and her own sense of the girl's fine
mettle. She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for
those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint
of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had
so persistently excluded her. There were even moments when she fancied
herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought
somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come
to her. And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small, so slight,
so visibly defenceless and undone, she still felt, through all the
superiority of her worldly advantages and her seeming maturity, the same
odd sense of ignorance and inexperience. She could not have said what
there was in the girl's manner and expression to give her this feeling,
but she was reminded, as she looked at Sophy Viner, of the other girls
she had known in her youth, the girls who seemed possessed of a secret
she had missed. Yes, Sophy Viner had their look--almost the obscurely
menacing look of Kitty Mayne...Anna, with an inward smile, brushed aside
the image of this forgotten rival. But she had felt, deep down, a
twinge of the old pain, and she was sorry that, even for the flash of
a thought, Owen's betrothed should have reminded her of so different a
woman...

She laid her hand on the girl's. "When his grandmother sees how happy
Owen is she'll be quite happy herself. If it's only that, don't be
distressed. Just trust to Owen--and the future."

Sophy Viner, with an almost imperceptible recoil of her whole slight
person, had drawn her hand from under the palm enclosing it.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about--the future."

"Of course! We've all so many plans to make--and to fit into each
other's. Please let's begin with yours."

The girl paused a moment, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
her lids dropped under Anna's gaze; then she said: "I should like to
make no plans at all...just yet..."

"No plans?"

"No--I should like to go away...my friends the Farlows would let me