At least, scrambling back to
solid ground again, she told Portia that she wanted to pay back to her
the cost of her education, as well as that could be calculated, and of
her trousseau.

Portia's negative of this proposition was as keen and straight as a
knife-edge. The thing wasn't to be discussed; not to be considered for
an instant. "We're perfectly well off, mother and I. We're living easily
within our income out here, and--we're as contented as possible." The
cadence of those last three words had a finality about it that closed
the subject.

Portia didn't want to share, vicariously, in the life she'd made
possible for Rose. The branch had withered indeed and didn't want the
pain of feeling the sap struggling up under its bark again. The ashes
had better be left banked up about the fading coal. The silence was like
the click of a closing door. Then Portia said:

"What does the North Side bunch think of you now you've come back? And
those Lake Forest friends of yours? They must have been hideously
scandalized. Are they going to forgive you?"

"Oh, they're lovely to me," said Rose. "The only one I've lost out with
is Frederica. She'll be a long time making it up with me, if she ever
does."

"She saw what Rodney went through while you were away, I expect,"
Portia suggested.

"That, of course," said Rose. "And then--well, my going away like that,
especially as she began to see what the idea was, must have seemed a
sort of criticism on her own way of life, which she's every reason to
feel perfectly satisfied with. And that, after she'd let herself get
really fond of me, and had brought me up by hand--which is what she did
that first season, must be pretty hard to forgive. She has forgiven me,
of course. She's a dear. But we've--sort of got to begin again."

Portia wanted to know about all the others: that pretty Williamson
woman, and a few more whose names she remembered.

Rose told her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent
topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally.
She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told
of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the
Chicago opening of _Come On In_. Everybody had been there and the
Crawfords had given a supper dance for her at the Blackstone afterward.
And driving in the last nail, she told of the feeble little witticism
old Mrs. Crawford had made apropos of her return--a rema