The Chaperon | Page 6

elapsed before
her father's death she spent with Mrs. Tramore exactly eight hours by
the watch. Her father, who was as inconsistent and disappointing as he
was amiable, spoke to her of her mother only once afterwards. This
occasion had been the sequel of her first visit, and he had made no use
of it to ask what she thought of the personality in Chester Square or
how she liked it. He had only said "Did she take you out?" and when
Rose answered "Yes, she put me straight into a carriage and drove me
up and down Bond Street," had rejoined sharply "See that that never
occurs again." It never did, but once was enough, every one they knew
having happened to be in Bond Street at that particular hour.
After this the periodical interview took place in private, in Mrs.
Tramore's beautiful little wasted drawing-room. Rose knew that, rare as
these occasions were, her mother would not have kept her "all to
herself" had there been anybody she could have shown her to. But in
the poor lady's social void there was no one; she had after all her own
correctness and she consistently preferred isolation to inferior contacts.
So her daughter was subjected only to the maternal; it was not
necessary to be definite in qualifying that. The girl had by this time a
collection of ideas, gathered by impenetrable processes; she had tasted,
in the ostracism of her ambiguous parent, of the acrid fruit of the tree of
knowledge. She not only had an approximate vision of what every one
had done, but she had a private judgment for each case. She had a
particular vision of her father, which did not interfere with his being
dear to her, but which was directly concerned in her resolution, after his
death, to do the special thing he had expressed the wish she should not
do. In the general estimate her grandmother and her grandmother's

money had their place, and the strong probability that any enjoyment of
the latter commodity would now be withheld from her. It included
Edith's marked inclination to receive the law, and doubtless eventually
a more substantial memento, from Miss Tramore, and opened the
question whether her own course might not contribute to make her
sister's appear heartless. The answer to this question however would
depend on the success that might attend her own, which would very
possibly be small. Eric's attitude was eminently simple; he didn't care
to know people who didn't know HIS people. If his mother should ever
get back into society perhaps he would take her up. Rose Tramore had
decided to do what she could to bring this consummation about; and
strangely enough--so mixed were her superstitions and her heresies--a
large part of her motive lay in the value she attached to such a
consecration.
Of her mother intrinsically she thought very little now, and if her eyes
were fixed on a special achievement it was much more for the sake of
that achievement and to satisfy a latent energy that was in her than
because her heart was wrung by this sufferer. Her heart had not been
wrung at all, though she had quite held it out for the experience. Her
purpose was a pious game, but it was still essentially a game. Among
the ideas I have mentioned she had her idea of triumph. She had caught
the inevitable note, the pitch, on her very first visit to Chester Square.
She had arrived there in intense excitement, and her excitement was left
on her hands in a manner that reminded her of a difficult air she had
once heard sung at the opera when no one applauded the performer.
That flatness had made her sick, and so did this, in another way. A part
of her agitation proceeded from the fact that her aunt Julia had told her,
in the manner of a burst of confidence, something she was not to repeat,
that she was in appearance the very image of the lady in Chester Square.
The motive that prompted this declaration was between aunt Julia and
her conscience; but it was a great emotion to the girl to find her
entertainer so beautiful. She was tall and exquisitely slim; she had hair
more exactly to Rose Tramore's taste than any other she had ever seen,
even to every detail in the way it was dressed, and a complexion and a
figure of the kind that are always spoken of as "lovely." Her eyes were
irresistible, and so were her clothes, though the clothes were perhaps a
little more precisely the right thing than the eyes. Her appearance was

marked to her daughter's sense by the highest distinction; though it may
be mentioned that this had never been the