duals but to her inherited pride. You know that threadbare phrase,
_noblesse oblige_? I can laugh when most of them use it. I never laughed
when I saw her cutting her conduct by it."

"I never knew--" She was about to say, in her glowing surprise, that she
never knew he cared so much for her mother, or that he had been
cherishing such memories.

"That's the reason, my dear," he was saying now, "why you must model
yourself on her, and not on me. I don't know that you ever had the least
desire to model yourself on me, but I feel very strongly about your
knowing what kind of woman she was and letting her--well, letting her
decide things for you."

"I wish"--All sorts of longings were choking her and crying for
expression; but she could only finish, "I wish she had not died."

"Yes, child. Now these people here, Rose,"--his voice had changed into a
decisive affirmation,--"they are a good sort, very gentle, very well
worth your meeting them with fairness. You haven't met them fairly. Now,
have you?"

"What do you mean?" She was trembling, not so much under his words as
from her own dreary shame. The shame had been with her all day, until
she was tired with it, and the words seemed to be little separate
floutings to make the burden heavier.

"Electra called you an adventuress. She had every right to."

"Yes. She had every right to." But Rose spoke with the unreasoning
bitterness of youth that, finding itself in the wrong path, is sure the
way, once entered, has no turning.

"She says you came here with a lie on your lips. Isn't that true?"

"But you told me"--She was seeking to get back her lost self, the one
that still believed in its own integrity. "I didn't choose to lead the
life she thinks I led. You told me it was the noblest thing to do."

"Ah!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I did. But did you make your
stand magnificently and face the conventions you defied? No! you came
here and told a lie. You chose the cheapest part you could, and played
it."

His righteous anger was sweeping her away. Everything helped him, even
her own sad sense of inexorable destiny and her poor desert.

"You have taken a very unfortunate step, child," he was saying. "You
came here on a questionable errand. Now you have owned up to these
people. They know what you are."

"Oh!" She threw out her hands at the horror of it. Until now she had not
seen herself as she must be, even in Electra's eyes. His way of
presenting things