“Come out with you?”
“My daughters are married. You know I’m a lone woman. It would be an immense pleasure to me to have so charming a creature as yourself to present to the world.”
“I go out with my mother,” said Rose, after a moment.
“Yes, but sometimes when she’s not inclined?”
“She goes everywhere she wants to go,” Rose continued, uttering the biggest fib of her life and only regretting it should be wasted on Mrs. Donovan.
“Ah, but do you go everywhere you want?” the lady asked sociably.
“One goes even to places one hates. Every one does that.”
“Oh, what I go through!” this social martyr cried. Then she laid a persuasive hand on the girl’s arm. “Let me show you at a few places first, and then we’ll see. I’ll bring them all here.”
“I don’t think I understand you,” replied Rose, though in Mrs. Donovan’s words she perfectly saw her own theory of the case reflected. For a quarter of a minute she asked herself whether she might not, after all, do so much evil that good might come. Mrs. Donovan would take her out the next day, and be thankful enough to annex such an attraction as a pretty girl. Various consequences would ensue and the long delay would be shortened; her mother’s drawing-room would resound with the clatter of teacups.
“Mrs. Bray’s having some big thing next week; come with me there and I’ll show you what I mane,” Mrs. Donovan pleaded.