"I do indeed," said Tanqueray.
Rose got on very well at tea-time. It was marvellous how many things she found to say. The conversation really made itself. She had only to sit there and ask Miss Holland how she liked her tea, weak or strong, and if she took so much milk or a little drop more, and sugar, one lump or two lumps, and that sized lump or a little larger? She spun it out till George was ready to begin talking. And there came a beautiful and sacred silence while Rose made Tanqueray's tea and gave it him.
After seven months it was still impossible for Rose to hide her deep delight in waiting on him. More than once her eyes turned from Jane to watch him in the wonderful and interesting acts of eating and drinking.
For a moment Jane suffered an abominable pang as she realized the things that were permissible to Rose, the things that she could say to Tanqueray, the things that she might do for him. At first she had looked away so that she might not see these tender approaches of Rose to Tanqueray. Then she remembered that this was precisely what she had come out to see,—that she had got to realize Rose. And thus, as she brought herself round to face it fairly, she caught in a flash Rose's attitude and the secret of it.
It was not a thing flung in her face to madden her, it had no bridal insolence about it, and none of the consecrated folly of the bride. It was a thing of pathos and of innocence, something between the uncontrollable tenderness, the divine infatuation of a mother, and the crude obsession of a girl uncertain of the man she has set her unhappy heart on; a thing, Rose's attitude, stripped of all secrecy by its sadness.
But there was nothing abject in it. It was strong; it was militant under its pathos and its renunciation. With such a look Rose would have faced gates of death closing between her and Tanqueray.
So Jane realized Rose.
And she said to herself, "What a good thing Tanks never did care for me. It would be awful if I made her more uncertain of him."
At this moment Tanqueray said, "How's Hambleby?"
"He's not quite so well as he was," said Jane.