Rose made an effort, she must learn to hide her heart, she who had never hidden anything! “Father, may I go to her dressmaker?” she asked archly.
“No!” he said sharply, “nor walk in her ways—the most extraordinary creature! Jane Allestree tells me there’ll be a divorce, and no wonder!”
Rose was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “Gerty said so.”
The judge leaned back in his corner and passed his hand over his eyes. “Ah!” he ejaculated and relapsed into silence.
XIV
ROSE slept but little that night; she tossed instead, trying to still her heart. She had seen Fox but a moment in the throng, but that moment had been enough for her to feel the subtle change in their relations. Her perceptions were delicate, far reaching, exquisitely sensitive. He was not himself, his troubled eye met hers with a confession of sorrow which she could not interpret. Standing outside of his consciousness, unaware of the struggle in his soul, she only saw estrangement, awkwardness, a mute appeal, which seemed to her incapable of explanation unless he loved Margaret and had been trifling with her. The thought made Rose sit up in bed with flaming cheeks.
It is useless to inculcate the spirit of meekness and Christian submission in a child when you cannot pluck the old Adam out of the heart. Rose was her father’s daughter; she meant to be a good Christian, she had little stiff limitations in her life, but she never thought of breaking her pride; it came to her with her blood, with her long and respectable descent from a race of God-fearing English yeomen, transplanted to the soil of a new world and endowed with a new and fuller stream of blood and physical beauty, but with the same hardy pluck, the same psalm-singing, fighting spirit which led the van at Naseby.
If Fox loved Margaret, if he meant to marry White’s wife when she was free—Rose shuddered, she had learned her father’s views on divorce and re-marriage by heart. At least, he should not pity her!
After awhile she lay down again and hid her burning face on her pillows, for it was wet with tears. She would not cry out, she would not flinch, but it hurt.
In the morning she bathed her eyes again and again in cold water, dressed and went down to breakfast. The judge was reading his morning paper and they were both rather taciturn. The old man had troubles of his own just then which Rose knew nothing about. He had invested some money unwisely and had heavily endorsed the notes of a friend, a man he had trusted, but lately a doubt began to thrust itself into his abstracted mind. Besides his salary as judge he had but a slender fortune, and if that were really involved and he should die—he looked up over his paper at Rose with anxious, affectionate eyes. She was looking down at her cup of coffee and did not perceive his glance, but he saw again the trouble in her face and thought her eyes looked as if she had been weeping; there was a droop, too, to her lips which was unnatural. It set him thinking, and a cloud settled on his usually serene brow.