"Hitting in the dark?"
"Yes. You know quite well."
"Oh, but really, really,—I didn't mean—" Rose almost wailed. There was no escape from those clear eyes. They didn't look sad or angry; they merely penetrated, spreading dismay within her.
Mrs. Upton now took the flushed face between her hands and gravely considered it. "Didn't you?" she asked.
Rose could look back no longer. Before that gaze a sense of utter darkness descended upon her. She felt, helplessly, like a naughty, cowering child. Her eyes dropped and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Please, please forgive me. I didn't dream you'd understand. I didn't mean anybody to understand, except, perhaps, Eddy. I don't know why, it's odious of me—but Imogen does irritate me, just a little, just because she is so good, you know—so lovely."
But this, too, Mrs. Upton penetrated. "Whether Imogen is so good and lovely that she irritates you is another matter. But, whatever you may think of her, don't,"—and here she paused a little over the proper expressing of Rose's misdeed,—"don't call her a calla lily," she found. And she finished, "Especially not before her mother, who is not so blind to your meaning as we must hope that Jack is."
Poor Rose looked now like the naughty child after a deserved chastisement.
"Oh, I am so miserable"; this statement of smarting fact was all she found to say. "And I do care for you so. I would rather please you than any one.—Can't you forgive me?"
But at this point the darkness was lifted, for Mrs. Upton, smiling at last, put her arms around her, kissed her, and said, "Be a nice little girl."