“What would you do, Mamma,” Rose asked quietly, “if anything--happened like that?”
Mrs. Pinsent drew a long breath. For a moment she was almost sorry that Bernard Shaw hadn’t had a sharper effect upon her daughter’s imagination. Mrs. Pinsent wasn’t anxious to explain what she would do. She only wanted to be vague, and at the same time helpful; her own case had been quite different, there had been the children, and, besides, Mr. Pinsent wasn’t French.
“We rather thought,” she said, “of staying on for some time in Rome, and then going to Paris for the first part of the summer. We should be quite near you then--and Agatha could go back to England for her tennis.”
“I couldn’t ever leave Léon,” Rose said strangely, “whatever happened.”
“No, dear, of course not,” said Mrs. Pinsent soothingly, then she started quite afresh and began plaiting her hair.
“Your father wanted me to tell you,” she said, “that he’s going to have your allowance settled upon you--and upon your children--that’s £500 a year, and later on you’ll have even more, of course, like your sisters, but the money is in an English bank, and it is quite your own, but you’re to have trustees as well, your father has seen to all that. Léon was so nice about it. I knew he would be. He’s been so generous and charming and most thoughtful.” Mrs. Pinsent got up and bent over her daughter. “You are happy, Rose?” she whispered. “You do feel safe?”
Rose lifted her undeterred, terribly triumphant eyes to her mother’s. “I feel as safe,” she said, “as if an angel loved me.”
CHAPTER VI
Everything had been done, the last trunk was packed, the last joke, not a very good one, accomplished by Agatha. The two elder sisters, tired out and unequal to their natural play of spirits, had gone to bed.
Rose flew downstairs to the telephone. The Swiss manageress, a sharp-tongued, good-hearted woman, rose wearily and shouted through the receiver. After a violent exchange of reproaches with an irate porter at the other end, she accomplished the feat of getting hold of Léon, and put the receiver into the girl’s hand. “He is there, Mademoiselle,” she said with a curious glance at the girl’s flushed face.