ed together by the family tie.

'What's this about your going to London, Rosie?' Leonora asked in a
voice soothing but surprised, when the meal had begun.

'You know, mamma. I mentioned it to you the other day.' The girl's tone
implied that what she had said to Leonora perhaps went in at one ear and
out at the other.

Leonora remembered. Rose had in fact casually told her that a school
friend in Oldcastle who was studying for the same examination as
herself had gone to London for six weeks' final coaching under what
Rose called a 'lady-crammer.'

'But you didn't tell me that you wanted to go as well,' Leonora said.

'Yes, mother, I did,' Rose affirmed with calm. 'You forget. I'm sure I
shan't pass if I don't go. So I asked father while you were all at this
opera affair.'

'And what did he say?' Ethel demanded.

'He said he would make inquiries this morning and see.'

Ethel gave a laugh of good-natured derision. 'Yes,' she exclaimed, 'and
you'll see, too!'

In response to this oracular utterance, Rose merely bent lower over her
plate.

Millicent, conscious of a brilliant vocation and of an impassioned
resolve, refrained from the discussion, and the sense of her ineffable
superiority bore hard on that lithe, mercurial youthfulness. The
'Signal,' in praising Millicent's performance at the opera, had
predicted for her a career, and had thoughtfully quoted instances of
well-born amateurs who had become professionals and made great names on
the stage. Millicent knew that all Bursley was talking about her. And
yet the family life was unaltered; no one at home seemed to be much
impressed, not even Ethel, though Ethel's sympathy could be depended
upon; Milly was still Milly, the youngest, the least important, the chit
of a thing. At times it appeared to her as though the triumph of that
ecstatic and glorious night was after all nothing but an illusion, and
that only the interminable dailiness of family life was real. Then the
ruthless and calculating minx in her shut tight those pretty lips and
coldly determined that nothing should stand against ambition.

'I do hope you will pass,' said Leonora cordially to Rose. 'You
certainly deserve to.'

'I know I shan't, unless I get some outside help. My brain isn't that
sort of brain. It's another sort. Only one has to knuckle down to these
wretched exams first.'

Leonora did not understand her daughter. She knew, however, that there
was not the slightest chance of Rose