“O mamma! is not that fancy?” said Rose, piteously. “Of what do you suspect me? Can you think I am unfeeling—ungrateful? I should not be YOUR daughter.”
“No, no,” said the baroness, “to do you justice, you attempt sorrow; as you put on black. But, my poor child, you do it with so little skill that one sees a horrible gayety breaking through that thin disguise: you are no true mourners: you are like the mutes or the undertakers at a funeral, forced grief on the surface of your faces, and frightful complacency below.”
“Tra la! lal! la! la! Tra la! la! Tra la! la!” carolled Jacintha, in the colonel’s room hard by.
The ladies looked at one another: Rose in great confusion.
“Tra la! la! la! Tra lal! lal! la! la! la!”
“Jacintha!” screamed Rose angrily.
“Hush! not a word,” said the baroness. “Why remonstrate with HER? Servants are but chameleons: they take the color of those they serve. Do not cry. I wanted your confidence, not your tears, love. There, I will not twice in one day ask you for your heart: it would be to lower the mother, and give the daughter the pain of refusing it, and the regret, sure to come one day, of having refused it. I will discover the meaning of it all by myself.” She went away with a gentle sigh; and Rose was cut to the heart by her words; she resolved, whatever it might cost her and Josephine, to make a clean breast this very day. As she was one of those who act promptly, she went instantly in search of her sister, to gain her consent, if possible.
Now, the said Josephine was in the garden walking with Camille, and uttering a wife’s tender solicitudes.
“And must you leave me? must you risk your life again so soon; the life on which mine depends?”
“My dear, that letter I received from headquarters two days ago, that inquiry whether my wound was cured. A hint, Josephine—a hint too broad for any soldier not to take.”