“Oh yes, I shall be,” Rose answered, with a swelling heart. Tom had made her feel sure of that. “Pauline, please don’t think about my staying here after June. I can’t stay. I want to go home.”
“You haven’t forgiven me for that wretched concert!” Pauline exclaimed.
“I haven’t thought of it again. It isn’t that, Pauline. How could it be? But I want to go home.”
“You will be miserable, just as you were before. Remember how you talked to me. You were bored to death.”
Rose flushed scarlet. “I wasn’t. Or if I was, I don’t mean to be so silly again.”
Pauline looked at her with an angry glance. “You are a homesick baby, Rose, that is the long and short of it. I gave you credit for being grown-up. It was a mistake you coming here at all. Clare didn’t get homesick.”
“Clare had her work,” answered Rose, knitting her pretty brows and looking miserably at Pauline’s angry face. “I am doing nothing I couldn’t do as well at home. I could come up once a week for lessons. Pauline, don’t be angry. You didn’t really think I should stay on after June, did you?”
“I gave you credit for meaning what you said,” returned Pauline harshly. “And what you said was true. You were not happy at home. If you go back, you will get bored and unhappy again.”
Rose shook her head. She had had a sharp lesson. She knew what the freedom was worth that Pauline had offered her. She longed to take up again the little daily cares that had filled her life at home. And she longed to get away from Pauline. She was beginning to feel that she had never really known her till now.
Pauline waited a moment for her to speak, and then turned sharply away. “Well, I shall not press you to stay with me. Madame Verney would be glad if I could live with her. I said it was impossible yesterday, as I was bound to you. Now I shall feel quite free to make my own arrangements. But you have disappointed me, Rose. I must tell you so quite frankly.”