The House of Mirth | Page 9

If
she had had the presence of mind to let Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession
might have purchased his silence. He had his race's accuracy in the appraisal of values,
and to be seen walking down the platform at the crowded afternoon hour in the company
of Miss Lily Bart would have been money in his pocket, as he might himself have
phrased it. He knew, of course, that there would be a large house-party at Bellomont, and
the possibility of being taken for one of Mrs. Trenor's guests was doubtless included in
his calculations. Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of
importance to produce such impressions.
The provoking part was that Lily knew all this--knew how easy it would have been to
silence him on the spot, and how difficult it might be to do so afterward. Mr. Simon
Rosedale was a man who made it his business to know everything about every one,
whose idea of showing himself to be at home in society was to display an inconvenient
familiarity with the habits of those with whom he wished to be thought intimate. Lily was
sure that within twenty-four hours the story of her visiting her dress-maker at the
Benedick would be in active circulation among Mr. Rosedale's acquaintances. The worst
of it was that she had always snubbed and ignored him. On his first appearance--when her
improvident cousin, Jack Stepney, had obtained for him (in return for favours too easily
guessed) a card to one of the vast impersonal Van Osburgh "crushes"--Rosedale, with
that mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which characterizes his race,
had instantly gravitated toward Miss Bart. She understood his motives, for her own
course was guided by as nice calculations. Training and experience had taught her to be
hospitable to newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later on, and there
were plenty of available OUBLIETTES to swallow them if they were not. But some
intuitive repugnance, getting the better of years of social discipline, had made her push
Mr. Rosedale into his OUBLIETTE without a trial. He had left behind only the ripple of
amusement which his speedy despatch had caused among her friends; and though later
(to shift the metaphor) he reappeared lower down the stream, it was only in fleeting
glimpses, with long submergences between.
Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples. In her little set Mr. Rosedale had been
pronounced "impossible," and Jack Stepney roundly snubbed for his attempt to pay his
debts in dinner invitations. Even Mrs. Trenor, whose taste for variety had led her into
some hazardous experiments, resisted Jack's attempts to disguise Mr. Rosedale as a
novelty, and declared that he was the same little Jew who had been served up and
rejected at the social board a dozen times within her memory; and while Judy Trenor was
obdurate there was small chance of Mr. Rosedale's penetrating beyond the outer limbo of
the Van Osburgh crushes. Jack gave up the contest with a laughing "You'll see," and,
sticking manfully to his guns, showed himself with Rosedale at the fashionable
restaurants, in company with the personally vivid if socially obscure ladies who are

available for such purposes. But the attempt had hitherto been vain, and as Rosedale
undoubtedly paid for the dinners, the laugh remained with his debtor.
Mr. Rosedale, it will be seen, was thus far not a factor to be feared--unless one put one's
self in his power. And this was precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let
him see that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with
her. Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the thought
with a little shiver, but it hung on her all the way to the station, and dogged her down the
platform with the persistency of Mr. Rosedale himself.
She had just time to take her seat before the train started; but having arranged herself in
her corner with the instinctive feeling for effect which never forsook her, she glanced
about in the hope of seeing some other member of the Trenors' party. She wanted to get
away from herself, and conversation was the only means of escape that she knew.
Her search was rewarded by the discovery of a very blond young man with a soft reddish
beard, who, at the other end of the carriage, appeared to be dissembling himself behind an
unfolded newspaper. Lily's eye brightened, and a faint smile relaxed the drawn lines of
her mouth. She had known that Mr. Percy Gryce was to be at Bellomont, but she had not
counted on the luck of having him to herself in the