Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/200

186 withdraw from you the light of my society."

"On whom then do you mean to bestow it?"

"On your daughter, this moment. I must go and judge for myself of her condition."

Tony looked at her more seriously. "If you're at all really troubled about her I'll go back with you. You're too beautifully kind; they told me of your having been with her this morning."

"Ah, you were with her this morning?" Rose asked of Jean in a manner to which there was a clear effort to impart the intonation of the casual, but which had in it something that made the person addressed turn to her with a dim surprise. Jean stood there in her black dress and her fair beauty; but her wonder was not of a sort to cloud the extraordinary radiance of her youth. "For ever so long. Don't you know I've made her my peculiar and exclusive charge?"

"Under the pretext," Tony went on, to Rose, "of saving her from perdition. I'm supposed to be in danger of spoiling her, but Jean treats her quite as spoiled; which is much the greater injury of the two."