own it."

"It's very strange that Dorothy hasn't married." Mrs. Jervis spoke. She
derived comfort from the thought that Dorothy was eight-and-twenty and
not married.

"Dorothy," said Frances, "could marry to-morrow if she wanted to; but
she doesn't want."

She was sorry for her friend, but she really could not allow her that
consolation.

"Veronica is growing up very good-looking," said Mrs. Jervis then.

But it was no use. Frances was aware that Veronica was grown up, and
that she was good-looking, and that Nicky loved her; but Mrs. Jervis's
shafts fell wide of all her vulnerable places. Frances was no
longer afraid.

"Veronica," she said, "is growing up very good." It was not the word she
would have chosen, yet it was the only one she could think of as likely
to convey to Mrs. Jervis what she wanted her to know, though it left her
obtuseness without any sense of Veronica's mysterious quality.

She herself had never tried to think of a word for it before; she was
only driven to it now because she detected in her friend's tone a
challenge and a warning. It was as if Rosalind's mother had said,
extensively and with pointed reference to the facts: "Veronica is
dangerous. Her mother has had adventures. She is grown-up and she is
good-looking, and Nicky is susceptible to that sort of thing. If you
don't look out he will be caught again. The only difference between
Phyllis Desmond and Veronica is in their skins."

So when Frances said Veronica was good, she meant that Mrs. Jervis
should understand, once for all, that she was not in the least like her
mother or like Phyllis Desmond.

That was enough for Mrs. Jervis. But it was not enough for Frances, who
found her mind wandering off from Rosalind's mother and looking for the
word of words that would express her own meaning to her own
satisfaction.

Her thoughts went on deep down under the stream of conversation that
flowed through her from Mrs. Jervis on her right hand to Mrs. Vereker
and Mrs. Norris on her left.

Veronica was good. But she was not wrapped up in other people's lives as
Frances was wrapped up. She was wrapped up, not in herself, but in some
life of her own that, as Frances made it out, had nothing in the world
to do with anybody else's.

And yet Veronica knew what you were feeling and what you were thinking,
and what you were going to do, and what was happening to you. (She had
really known, in Dresden, what was happening to Nicky when Desmond