“Did they send you to fetch me?” “Yes, but we needn’t go back yet, need we? Aunt Caroline wants to wear her emeralds, but she says they will look vulgar with pink satin. There’s some lovely grey stuff like a cobweb. She says it was in her mother’s trousseau and I think she ought to wear that, but she says she is going to keep it until she’s old!” “Then she’ll never wear it. She will never make such an admission.” “And she won’t let Aunt Sophia have it because she says it would make her look like a dusty broom. And it would, you know! She’s really very funny sometimes.” “Very funny. We’re queer people, Henrietta.” “Are we? And I’m more theirs than yours.” “As far as blood goes, yes.” She spoke very quietly, but she felt a great desire to assert, for once, her own claims, instead of accepting those of others. She wanted to tell Henrietta that in return for the secret care, the growing affection she was giving, she demanded confidence and love; but she had never asked for anything in her life. She had taken coolly much she could easily have done without, admiration and respect and the material advantages to which she had been born, but she had asked for nothing. Cruelly conscious of all that lay in the gift of Henrietta, who sat in a low chair, her chin on the joined fingers of her hands, Rose continued to look at the fire. “You mean I’m really more like you?” Henrietta said. “Am I? I’m like my father,” and she added softly, “terribly.” “Why terribly?” Henrietta moved her feet. “Oh, I don’t know.” “I wish you’d tell me.” “He was queer. You said we all were, and I’m a Mallett, too, that’s all. Don’t you think we ought to go and see about the dresses now? Aunt Rose, they’re bothering me to wear white, the only thing for a young girl, but I want to wear yellow. Don’t you think I might?” Rose, who had felt herself on the brink of confidences, as though she peered over a cliff, and watched the mists clear to show the secret valley underneath, now saw the clouds thicken hopelessly, and retreated from her position with an effort. “Yellow? Yes, certainly. You will look like a marigold. Henrietta—” She did not know what she was going to say, but she wanted to detain the girl for a little longer, she hoped for another chance of drawing nearer. “Henrietta, wait a minute.” She moved to her dressing-table, smiling at what she was about to do. It seemed as though she were going to bribe the girl to love her, but she was only yielding to the pathetic human desire to give something tangible since the intangible was ignored. “When I was twenty-one,” she said, “your father gave me a present.” “Only when you were twenty-one?”