“Do you know,” Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her chair nearer, “do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from what I am to anyone?”
“Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you really are.”
“You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!”
She says it with a kind of scorn—though not of Rosa—and sits brooding, looking dreamily at her.
“Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?”
“I don’t know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my heart, I wish it was so.”
“It is so, little one.”
The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an explanation.
“And if I were to say today, ‘Go! Leave me!’ I should say what would give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very solitary.”
“My Lady! Have I offended you?”
“In nothing. Come here.”
Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady’s feet. My Lady, with that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.
“I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot. There are