"My dear Rosy, I have no remarks to make at all," said Oliver, easily. "Take your own way and I shall take mine. You are good enough to give me plenty of rope, and I should be uncivil indeed if I commented on the length of yours."
Mrs. Romaine had been moving restlessly to and fro: she now stood still, on the hearthrug, her hands clasped before her, her face turned attentively towards her brother. Evidently she was struck by his words.
"If you would speak out," she said at last, her smooth voice vibrating as if he had touched some chord of passion which was usually hushed to silence, "I should know better what you mean. You deal too much in hints and insinuations. You have said things of this sort before. I must know what you mean."
"Come, Rosy," said Oliver, rising from his low seat and confronting her, "don't be so tragic—so intense. Plump little women like you shouldn't go in for tragedy. Smile, Rosy; it is your métier to smile. You have won a good many games by smiling. You must smile on now—to the bitter end."
He smiled himself as he looked at her—an unpleasant smile, with thin lips drawn back from white sharp looking teeth, which gave him the air of a snarling dog. Mrs. Romaine's face belied his words. It was tragic enough, intense enough, for a woman who had known mortal agony; the suggestion of placidity usually given by her smiling lips and rounded unwrinkled cheeks had disappeared; she might have stood for an impersonation of sorrow and despair. Oliver's mocking voice recalled her to herself.
"A very good pose, Rosalind. The Tragic Muse indeed. Are you going to rival Ethel Kenyon? I am afraid it is rather late for you to go on the stage, that's all. Let me see: you have touched forty, have you not? I would acknowledge only thirty-nine if I were you. There is more than a year's difference between thirty-nine and forty."
The strained muscles of her face relaxed: she made
a little impatient gesture with her hands, then turned to the fireplace, and with one arm upon the mantelpiece, looked down into the fire.
"You drive me nearly mad sometimes, Oliver," she said, in a low, passionate voice, "by your habit of saying only half a thing at a time. I know well enough that you are remonstrating with me now: that you disapprove of something—and will not tell me what. By and by, if I am in trouble or perplexity, you will turn round upon me and say that you warned me—told me that you disapproved—or something of that sort. You always do it, and it is not fair. Innuendoes are not warnings."
"My dear Rosalind," said her brother, coolly, "I hope I know my place. I'm ten years younger than you are, and have been at various times much indebted to your generosity. It does not become me to take exception at anything that girls may like to do."