"I want to see Lucy, too," said Rose. "I am going over there. It is a
lovely afternoon. I have nothing I want to read and nothing to do. I
am going over there."

Henry's eyes questioned Horace's, which said, plainly, to the other
man, "For God's sake, don't let her go; don't let her go!"

Rose had run up-stairs for her parasol. Horace turned away. He
understood that Henry would help him. "Don't let her go over there
this afternoon," said Henry to Sylvia, who looked at him in the
blankest amazement.

"Why not, I'd like to know?" asked Sylvia.

"Don't let her go," repeated Henry.

Sylvia looked suspiciously from one man to the other. The only
solution which a woman could put upon such a request immediately
occurred to her. She said to herself, "Hm! Mr. Allen wants Rose to
stay at home so he can see her himself, and Henry knows it."

She stiffened her neck. Down deep in her heart was a feeling more
seldom in women's hearts than in men's. She would not have owned that
she did not wish to part with this new darling of her heart--who had
awakened within it emotions of whose strength the childless woman had
never dreamed. There was also another reason, which she would not
admit even to herself. Had Rose been, indeed, her daughter, and she
had possessed her from the cradle to womanhood, she would probably
have been as other mothers, but now Rose was to her as the infant she
had never borne. She felt the intense jealousy of ownership which the
mother feels over the baby in her arms. She wished to snatch Rose
from every clasp except her own.

She decided at once that it was easy to see through the plans of
Horace and her husband, and she determined to thwart them. "I don't
see why she shouldn't go," she said. "It is a lovely afternoon. The
walk will do her good. Lucy Ayres is a real nice girl, and of course
Rose wants to see girls of her own age now and then."

"It is Sunday," said Henry. He felt and looked like a hypocrite as he
spoke, but the distress in Horace's gaze was too much for him.

Sylvia sniffed. "Sunday," said she. "Good land! what has come over
you, Henry Whitman? It has been as much as I could do to get you to
go to meeting the last ten years, and now all of a sudden you turn
around and think it's wicked for a young girl to run in and see
another young girl Sunday afternoon." Sylvia sniffed again very
distinctly, and then Rose entered the room.

Her clear, fair face looked from one to another from u