"Oh, never mind," said Gertrude, with her usual independence; "no mother ever was angry yet because her child was admired. I will bring him down to your door when he gets weary--there, do go away--he grows more lovely every minute, and I am losing time."
It was not strange that Gertrude should have been unaware of the presence of the new lodger, rarely leaving her studio and the little room adjoining, where she had her meals served, except in the evening, when Rose was shut up in her own apartment, a prey to sorrowful thoughts.
Gertrude was as unlike other women in her dislike of gossip as in various other items we might name. Provided she were not interfered with, it mattered nothing to her who occupied the rooms about her. It is only the empty-minded who, having no resources of their own, busy themselves with the affairs of their neighbors. It was unaccountable to her how the number of another woman's dresses, or bonnets, the hours and the places in which she promenaded, the visitors she had, or refused to have, her hours for rising, eating, and retiring, or the exact state of her finances, could be matters of such momentous interest. Living contentedly in a world of her own, she had neither time nor inclination for such petty researches.
A month had elapsed since Rose's sickness; she was now convalescent, and able to part with the faithful Chloe, who claimed the privilege of calling in occasionally to see Massa Charley. Rose was again alone--no, not quite alone, for Gertrude had made her acquaintance, to explain her capture of Charley, and ask the loan of him till the picture should be finished.
Gertrude was at a loss to comprehend Rose's manner: at one moment frank and sisterly, at the next cold, silent, and repellant. Rose was struggling with two contending feelings; her straightforward ingenuousness made her shrink from the idea of concealing from one of her own sex, who thus sought her acquaintance, her real history. She shrank from a friendship based on deception.
Simple, straightforward Rose! as if half the friendships in the world would not snap in twain, placed on any other basis! If each heart, with its disingenuous trickeries, its selfish purposes and aims, were laid bare to its neighbor, if the real motives for seeming kindness, the inner life, whose pure outward seeming is often in direct inversion to the hidden corruption were as transparent to the human as to the Omniscient eye, who could stand the test?