"
"And do cast one glance, if only of disapprobation, upon me, Jack," Rose
pleaded in mock distress.
"You are a very amusing child, Rose, sometimes," was Pennington's only
answer.
"He's evidently very cross with me," said Rose, when he was gone. "While
you are not--you who have every right to be, angelic Molly."
"I hope you didn't realize, Rose, how you were hurting him."
"I?" Rose opened wide eyes. "How, pray?"
"Don't you know that he is devoted to Imogen Upton?"
"Why, who isn't devoted to her, except wicked me?"
"Devoted in particular--in love with her, I think," said Mary.
Rose's face took on a more acutely discontented look, after the pause in
which she seemed, though unrepentantly, to acquiesce in a conviction of
ineptitude. "Really in love with her?"
"I think so; I hope so."
"How foolish of him," said Rose. Mary, at this, rested a gaze so long and
so reproachful upon her that the discontent gave way to an affectionate
compunction. "The truth is, Mary, that I'm jealous; I'm petty; I'm horrid.
I don't like sharing you. I like you to like me most, and not to find other
people wonderful."
"If you own that you are naughty, Rose, dear, and that you try hard to be
naughtier than you really are, I can't be angry with you. But it does hurt
me, for your own sake, to see you--really malicious, dear."
"Oh, dear! Am I that?"
"Really you are."
"Because I called Imogen Upton a saint in velvet?--and like her mother so
much, much more?"
"Yes, because of that--and all the rest.
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