“Oh, but I do,” said Mrs. Delafield.
The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it.
“As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an interest in that aspect of my situation,” she went back, “Christopher hasn’t, it’s true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in London—after Niel sets me free.” And here again she just glanced at her aunt, who bowed assent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set you free; at once."—“And until then,” Rhoda went on, as if she hadn’t needed the assurance,—second-rate assurance as, Mrs. Delafield felt sure, she found it,—“and until then I shall stay in the country. Christopher has his post still at the Censor’s office, and won’t, I’m afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,—we are looking for one now,—and I shall see a few friends there, quite quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is settled. I think that’s the best plan.”
Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very completely into her corner.
There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and Jane Amoret, gently and unobtrusively moving among her blocks, succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and looked up at her great-aunt for approbation.
“Very good, darling. A beautiful house,” said Mrs. Delafield, leaning over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become! There was Rhoda’s jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her.
“She’s quite used to you already, isn’t she?” said Rhoda, watching them. “I wonder what you’ll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull little thing, though she’s certainly very pretty. She’s rather like Niel, isn’t she? Though she certainly isn’t as dull as Niel!” She laughed slightly. "All the same,"—and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda’s voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda’s eyes took on a new watchfulness,—“All the same I must consider the poor little thing’s future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty.”
“Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?” Mrs Delafield prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda’s ear, the transition to conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her own. “Oh, but you need not do that. Don’t let that trouble you for a moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her—complete charge. I can do it easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I don’t find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You need really have no anxiety.”
“Oh, I see.” Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. “Thanks. That’s certainly a relief. Though all the same I don’t suppose you’d claim that you could replace the child’s mother.”
“Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover.”