Pauline waited a moment for her to speak, and then turned sharply away. “Well, I shall not press you to stay with me. Madame Verney would be glad if I could live with her. I said it was impossible yesterday, as I was bound to you. Now I shall feel quite free to make my own arrangements. But you have disappointed me, Rose. I must tell you so quite frankly.” And Rose felt quite crushed for the moment by the judicial air with which Pauline pronounced this judgment on her. CHAPTER IX. PAULINE HAS HER SUSPICIONS. Pauline and Rose went down to Woodcote on Friday evening. Pauline had apparently recovered her spirits, and was in her brightest mood. She had been very sweet and caressing to Rose ever since their talk on the evening of Tom’s visit to the flat. Rose inwardly chafed at this show of affection; she had ceased to believe in Pauline’s sincerity. Miss Merivale was waiting at the station for them with the pony carriage. The groom had driven her down, but Rose begged to be allowed to drive back. It was the first time she had driven the new pony, which was a pretty, gentle, timid creature, obedient to the lightest touch on the reins. “We must take Miss Smythe to Bingley woods to-morrow, Rose dear,” Miss Merivale said, as they drove slowly up the long hill from the station. “The primroses are very plentiful this year. Tom says the ground is carpeted with them.” Rose did not answer. The pony had started aside at the sight of a railway train that had just come out of the tunnel, and she was engaged in soothing it. “Rose, you had better let me drive,” Pauline suggested. “I drove a great deal when I was staying with the Warehams. You are not firm enough.” “It is only trains and traction engines Bob is frightened of,” Miss Merivale said. “And coaxing is best, I am sure. There, we shall have no more trouble with him now. He is a dear little fellow.” Pauline said nothing, but she had some difficulty in keeping herself from shrugging her shoulders. She thought both Miss Merivale and Rose deplorably weak and silly. A smart stroke with the whip was what the pony wanted. But she had come down determined to be on her best behaviour, and she made some smiling remark on the beauty of the country. “Rose has been pining for fresh air like a lark in a cage,” she said. “Are you content now, Rosie?” “Tom said she looked pale,” Miss Merivale said, giving Rose an anxious, loving glance. “I wish you would come down again next week, dear. I can’t let a fortnight pass again without seeing you; it is much too long.” “Time goes faster in London,” said Pauline, without allowing Rose to answer. “It seems only yesterday that Rose came to me. How quiet it is here! Don’t you miss the roar of London, Rosie? I do. Not the clatter of cabs and carts, but that deep, low roar we hear when we open the window. It is like the voice of the great city. There is no music like it.”