Yes, Rose would hide her impertinence from
others' ears. Imogen had noted the growing tenderness, light and playful,
between her mother and the girl. Behind her, presently, she rustled in all
her silks as she leaned to whisper something to Mrs. Upton--"You will come
and have tea with me,--at Sherry's,--all by ourselves?" Imogen caught.
Her mother was not the initiator, but her acquiescence was an offense, and
to Imogen, acutely conscious of the whispered colloquy, each murmur ran
needles of anger into her stretched and vibrating nerves. At last she
turned eyes portentously widened and a prolonged "Ss-s-s-h" upon them.
"People _oughtn't_ to whisper," Jack smiled comprehendingly at her, when
they reached the end of the symphony; the rest of the movement having been
occupied, for Imogen, with a sense of indignant injury.
She had caught his attention, then, with her reproof. There was sudden balm
in his sympathy. The memory of the unnoticed tear still rankled in her, but
she was able to smile back. "Some people will always be the money-lenders
in the temple."
At once the balm was embittered. She had trusted too much to his sympathy.
He flushed his quick, facile flush, and she was again at the confines of
the shadow. Really, it was coming to a pass when she could venture no least
criticism, even by implication, of her mother.
But, keeping up her smile, she went on: "You don't feel that? To me,
music is a temple, the cathedral of my soul.
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