little breathlessly at a loss
what to say.

"I'm Rose Aldrich." She didn't, in words, say, "I'm just Rose Aldrich."
It was the little bend in her voice that carried that impression. "And I
suppose I was--looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly
what you meant by what you said."

Greville's eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon
the flushed young face; took a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to
the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen
to you.

"_Mon dieu_," she said, "_j'ai grande envie de vous le dire_." She
hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a
ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as
if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess.

"You must forgive me," she said, "if I make my farewells a little soon.
I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater,
and if it is to be done to-day, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a
very pleasant afternoon.--Make your farewells, also, my child," she
concluded, turning to her prisoner, "because you are going with me."

There was something Olympian about the way she did it. The excuse was
made, and the regret expressed in the interest of courtesy, but neither
was insisted on as a fact, nor was seriously intended, it appeared, even
to disguise the fact, which was simply that she had found something
better worth her while, for the moment, than that tea. It occurred to
Rose that there wasn't a woman in town--not even terrible old Mrs.
Crawford, Constance's mother-in-law, who could have done that thing in
just that way; no one who felt herself detached, or, in a sense,
superior enough, to have done it without a trace of self-consciousness,
and consequently without offense. An empress must do things a good deal
like that.

The effect on Rose was to make complete frankness seem the easiest thing
in the world. And frankness seemed to be the thing called for. Because
no sooner were they seated in the actress' car and headed north along
the drive, than she, instead of answering Rose's question, repeated one
of her own.

"I ask who you are, and you say your name--Rose something. But that
tells me nothing. Who are you--one of them?"

"No, not exactly," said Rose. "Only by accident. The man I married
is--one of them, in a way. I mean, because of his family and all that.
And so they take me in."

"So you are married,