She found dining in Royal Geographical circles less of
a bore than usual, and deliberately laid herself out to
talk well. She looked in the glass sometimes at a little
vertical line that seemed to be coming at the corners of
her mouth, and wondered whether at twenty-four one might
expect the first indication of approaching old-maidenhood.
When she was paler than usual she reflected that the
season was taking a good deal out of her. She was bravely
and rigidly commonplace with Kendal, who told her that
she ought to drop it and go out of town--she was not
looking well. She drew closer to her father, and at the
same time armed her secret against him at all points.
Janet would have had any one know rather than he. She
felt that it implied almost a breach of faith, of
comradeship, to say nothing of the complication of her
dignity, which she wanted upheld in his eyes before all
others. In reality she made him more the sovereign of
her affections and the censor of her relations than nature
designed Lawrence Cardiff to be in the parental connection.
It gave him great pleasure that he could make his daughter
a friend, and accord her the independence of a friend;
it was a satisfaction to him that she was not obtrusively
filial.
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