, by a
peculiar irony, as Tanqueray's genius became recognized, Rose, though
not exactly recognized in any social sense, undoubtedly tended to
appear. Tanqueray might dine "out" without her (he frequently did), but
when it came to asking people back again she was bound to be in
evidence. Not that he allowed himself to tread the ruinous round. He
still kept people at arm's length. Only people were more agreeably
disposed towards George Tanqueray recognized than they had been towards
George Tanqueray obscure, and he in consequence was more agreeably
disposed towards them. Having made it clearly understood that he would
not receive people, that he barred himself against all intrusions and
approaches, occasionally, at the length of his arm, he did receive them.
And they immediately became aware of Rose.

That did not matter, considering how little _they_ mattered. The
nuisance of it was that he thus became aware of her himself. Rose at the
head of his table, so conspicuously and yet so fortuitously his wife,
emphasizing her position by her struggles to sustain it, Rose with her
embarrassments and solecisms, with her lost innocence in the matter of
her aspirates, agonized now by their terrified flight and by her own
fluttering efforts at recapture, Rose was not a person that anybody
could ignore, least of all her husband.

As long as she had remained a servant in his house he had been unaware
of her, or aware of her only as a presence beneficent, invisible,
inaudible. Here again his celebrity, such as it was, had cursed him. The
increase in Tanqueray's income, by enabling them to keep a servant, had
the effect of throwing Rose adrift about the house. As the mistress of
it, with a maid under her, she was not quite so invisible, nor yet so
inaudible as she had been.

It seemed to Tanqueray that his acuter consciousness dated from the
arrival of that maid. Rose, too, had developed nerves. The maid
irritated Rose. She put her back up and rubbed her the wrong way in all
the places where she was sorest. For Rose's weakness was that she
couldn't tolerate any competition in her own line. She couldn't, as she
said, abide sitting still and seeing the work taken out of her hands,
seeing another woman clean _her_ house, and cook _her_ husband's dinner,
and she knowing that she could do both ten times as well herself. She
appealed to Tanqueray to know how he'd like it if she was to get a man
in to write his books for him. She was alwa