permitted joke—a friendly compliment? We're all so with you."
She had turned away from him. She went on, as if she had not heard him, with a sudden tremor in her voice—the tremor of a deep upheaval: "Why does she give opinions that nobody wants or asks her for? What does she know of our relations or of what difficulties and mysteries she touches? Why can't she leave us alone—at least for the first hour?"
Embarrassment was in Tony's gasp—the unexpected had sprung up before him. He could only stammer after her as she moved away: "Bless my soul, my dear child—you don't mean to say there are difficulties? Of course it's no one's business—but one hoped you were in quiet waters." Across her interval, as he spoke, she suddenly faced round, and his view of her, with this, made him smite his forehead in his penitent, expressive way. "What a brute I am not to have seen you're not quite happy, and not to have noticed that he———!" Tony caught himself up; the face offered him was the convulsed face that had not been offered Dennis Vidal. Rose literally glared at him; she stood there with her two
