“How can I tell you more,” Henrietta protested, “when I know what you would be thinking? You would be thinking she was common. Aunt Caroline does. She does! I don’t know how she dare! No, I won’t have the necklace.”
“You must believe what I say, Henrietta. Your mother was not the only woman in your father’s life, and I was referring to the others.”
“You need not speak of them to me,” Henrietta said with dignity.
“I won’t do so again. That, perhaps, is where my own taste failed.” She decided to put out no more feelers for Henrietta’s thoughts. It was what she would have resented bitterly herself, and it did no good. She was not clever at this unpractised art, and she told herself that if her own affection could not tell her what she wished to know, the information would be useless. Moreover, she had Henrietta’s word for it that she was terribly like her father.
“So put on the necklace again. It suits you better than it does me, so well that we can pretend he really chose it for you.”
“Yes,” Henrietta said, fingering it again, “if you promise you never think anything horrid about my mother.”
“The worst I have ever thought of her,” Rose said lightly, “is envying her for her daughter.”
She saw Henrietta’s mouth open inelegantly. “Me? Oh, but you’re not old enough.”
“I feel very old sometimes.”
“I thought you were when I first saw you,” Henrietta said, looking in the glass and swaying her body to make the diamonds glitter, “but now I know you never will be, because it’s only ugly people who get old. When your hair is white you’ll be like a queen. Now you’re a princess, though Mrs. Sales says you’re a witch. Oh, I didn’t mean to tell you that. It was a long time ago. She is never disagreeable now. I’m going to see her again to-morrow.”