“There is room for you; sit down, for I want to speak seriously to you.”

“Yes, mamma; what is it?”

“Turn a little round, and let me see your face.”

Rose complied; and began to feel a little uneasy.

“Perhaps you can guess what I am going to say to you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I am going to put a question to you.”

“With all my heart, dear mamma.”

“I invite you to explain to me the most singular, the most unaccountable thing that ever fell under my notice.  Will you do this for your mother?”

“O mamma! of course I will do anything to please you that I can; but, indeed, I don’t know what you mean.”

“I am going to tell you.”

The old lady paused.  The young one, naturally enough, felt a chill of vague anxiety strike across her frame.

“Rose,” said the old lady, speaking very gently but firmly, and leaning in a peculiar way on her words, while her eye worked like an ice gimlet on her daughter’s face, “a little while ago, when my poor Raynal—­our benefactor—­was alive—­and I was happy—­you all chilled my happiness by your gloom:  the whole house seemed a house of mourning—­tell me now why was this.”

“Mamma!” said Rose, after a moment’s hesitation, “we could hardly be gay.  Sickness in the house!  And if Colonel Raynal was alive, still he was absent, and in danger.”

“Oh! then it was out of regard for him we were all dispirited?”

“Why, I suppose so,” said Rose, stoutly; but then colored high at her own want of candor.  However, she congratulated herself that her mother’s suspicion was confined to past events.

Her self-congratulation on that score was short; for the baroness, after eying her grimly for a second or two in silence, put her this awkward question plump.

“If so, tell me why is it that ever since that black day when the news of his death reached us, the whole house has gone into black, and has gone out of mourning?”

“Mamma,” stammered Rose, “what do you mean?”

“Even poor Camille, who was so pale and wan, has recovered like magic.”

“O mamma! is not that fancy?” said Rose, piteously.  “Of what do you suspect me?  Can you think I am unfeeling—­ungrateful?  I should not be your daughter.”

“No, no,” said the baroness, “to do you justice, you attempt sorrow; as you put on black.  But, my poor child, you do it with so little skill that one sees a horrible gayety breaking through that thin disguise:  you are no true mourners:  you are like the mutes or the undertakers at a funeral, forced grief on the surface of your faces, and frightful complacency below.”

“Tra la! lal! la! la!  Tra la! la!  Tra la! la!” carolled Jacintha, in the colonel’s room hard by.

The ladies looked at one another:  Rose in great confusion.

“Tra la! la! la!  Tra lal! lal! la! la! la!”