"Speak, Rose—dear Rose!" said Gertrude, kissing her cold face, as madame left the room. "Speak, Rose; do not let that miserable bundle of French trumpery crush so pure and noble a heart as yours. We will go away, Rose—you, and I, and dear little Charley. And, oh, Rose! when could I have a better time to plead for my brother's happiness, for yours, for my own? Put it beyond the power of any one to poison your peace, Rose; be indeed my sister."
Rose's only reply was a low shuddering sob, as she drew closer to Gertrude.
"Just as good as new," said Miss Anne, looking complacently at herself in the brown silk. "Anne, you should be prime minister; you have a talent for diplomacy; femininity is too circumscribed a sphere for the exercise of your talents. You did that well, Anne—Madame Vincent thrown completely off the track, Rose crushed and out of your way forever; the baby ditto. Madame Macque is very careful of her reputation in this country, because she never had any in France. Ha—ha, Anne, you are a genius—and this brown silk is a proof of it. Now, look out for presents about this time, for your star is at its culminating point. Rose has beauty—has she? Vincent fancied her—did he? A rose's doom is to fade and wither—to be plucked, then trodden under foot;" and Miss Anne laughed one of her Satanic laughs.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Sally came into the kitchen just as the clock was striking seven. The Maltese cat heard the old clock, jumped up, and shook herself, just as if her dream of a ducking at the hands of the grocer-boy were true. Three stray cockroaches—cockroaches, like poor relatives, will intrude into the best-regulated families—scampered before Sally's footsteps to their hiding-places, and the little thieving brown mouse on the dresser took temporary refuge in the sugar-bowl.
Sally had been up stairs performing her afternoon toilet by the aid of a cracked looking-glass, which had a way of multiplying Sally's very suggestive to her crushed hopes. Sally, I am sorry to say, had been jilted. Milkmen do not always carry the milk of human kindness in their flinty bosoms. Time was when Jack Short never came into the kitchen with his can, without tossing Sally a bunch of caraway, or fennel, a nosegay of Bouncing Bettys, or a big apple or pear. Time was when his whip-lash always wanted mending, and it took two to find a string in the closet to do it, and two pair of hands to tie it on when found.
"Poor old thing!" the faithless John would now say to the rosy little plumptitude who had won his heart away from the angular Sally; "Poor old thing! I was only fooling a little, just to keep my hand in, and she thought I was in love."