The Misses Mallett | Page 9

marry,
Caroline; we ought to have more parties. We are not doing our duty.'
'Parties! No!' Rose said. 'We have enough of them. If you threaten me
with more I shall go into a convent.'
Caroline laughed, and Sophia sighed again. 'That would be beautiful,'
she said.
'Sophia, how dare you?'
Sophia persisted mildly: 'So romantic--a young girl giving up all for
God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself--
a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision
that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name--a nun! She
would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister Rose!'
She developed her idea. 'Saint Rose! It's as pretty as Saint
Cecilia--prettier!'
'Sophia, you're in your dotage,' Caroline cried. 'A Mallett and a nun!
Well, she could pray for the rest of us, I suppose.'
'But I would rather you were married, dear,' Sophia said serenely. 'And
we have known the Sales all our lives. It would have been so suitable.'
'So dull!' Rose murmured.
'And we need praying for,' Caroline said. 'You'd be dull either way,
Rose. Have your fling, as I did. I've never regretted it. I was the talk of
Radstowe, wasn't I, Sophia? There was never a ball where I was not

looked for, and when I entered the ballroom'--she gave a display of
how she did it--'there was a rush of black coats and white shirts-- a
mob--I used just to wave them all away--like that. Oh, yes, Sophia, you
were a belle, too--'
'But never as you were, Caroline.'
'You were admired for yourself, Sophia, but with me it was curiosity.
They only wanted to hear what I should say next. I had a tongue like a
lash! They were afraid of it.'
'Yes, yes,' Sophia said hastily, and she glanced at Rose, afraid of
meeting scepticism in her clear young eyes; but though Rose was
smiling it was not in mockery. She was thinking of her childhood when,
like a happier Cinderella, she had seen her stepsisters, in satins and
laces, with pendant fans and glittering jewels, excited, rustling, with
little words of commendation for each other, setting out for the evening
parties of which they never tired. They had always kissed her before
they went, looking, she used to think, as beautiful as princesses.
'And men like what they fear,' Caroline added.
'Yes, dear,' Sophia said. A natural flush appeared round the delicate
dabs of rouge. She hoped she might be forgiven for her tender deceits.
Those young men in the white waistcoats had often laughed at Caroline
rather than at her wit; she was, as Sophia had shrinkingly divined, as
often as not their butt, and dear Caroline had never known it; she must
never know it, never know it. She drew half her happiness from the past,
as, so differently, Sophia did herself, and, drooping a little, her thoughts
went farther back to the last year of her teens when a pale and penniless
young man had been her secret suitor, had gone to America to make his
fortune there--and died. She had told no one; Caroline would have
scorned him because he was shy and timid, and he had not had time to
earn enough to keep her; he had not had time. She had a faded
photograph of him pushed away at the back of a drawer of the walnut
bureau in the bedroom she shared with Caroline, a pale young man
wearing a collar too large for his thin neck, a young man with kind,
honest eyes. It was a grief to her that she could not wear that
photograph in a locket near her heart, but Caroline would have found
out. They had slept in the same bed since they were children, and
nothing could be hidden from her except the love she still cherished in
her heart. Some day she meant to burn that photograph lest

unsympathetic hands should touch it when she died; but death still
seemed far off, and sometimes, even while she was talking to Caroline,
she would pretend to rummage in the drawer, and for a moment she
would close her hand upon the photograph to tell him she had not
forgotten. She loved her little romance, and the gaiety in which she had
persisted, even on the day when she heard of his death and which at
first had seemed a necessary but cruel disloyalty, had become in her
mind the tenderest of concealments, as though she had wrapped her
secret in beauty, laughter, music and shining garments.
'Oh, yes, dear Rose,' she said, lifting her head, 'you must be married.'

§ 2
The outward life of the Mallett household was elegant and ordered.
Footsteps fell quietly on the carpeted