Twice she had walked by the perfect doorway of the McCrea house before
she entered it; ostensibly to give herself a little more time to
think--really, because she shrank from the ordeal that awaited her in
there.
Her sister's menage had been a source of irritation to Portia ever since
it was established, though a deeper irritation was her own with herself
for allowing it to affect her thus. Rose's whole-hearted plunge into the
frivolities of a social season, her outspoken delight in it, her finding
in it, apparently, a completely satisfactory solution to the problem of
existence, couldn't fail to arouse Portia's ironic smile. This was the
sort of vessel her mother had freighted with her hopes! This was the
course she steered.
She had fought this feeling with a bitter self-contempt. The trouble
with her was, she told herself in icy self-communings, that she envied
Rose her happiness, her opportunities, her husband--even her house. Why
should all that wonderful furniture have been wasted on Rose, to whom a
perfect old Jacobean gate-legged table was nothing but a surface to drop
anything on that she wanted out of her hands? Why should a man of
Rodney's powerful intelligence waste his time on her frivolous
amusements, content, apparently, just to sit and gaze at her, oblivious
of any one else who might happen to be about? She knew that she, Portia,
out of her disciplined experience of life, and her real eagerness for
knowledge of it, was better able to challenge the attention of his mind
than Rose.
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