She had no
resource but to be unpleasant to Sophia, to the silently devoted Susan
and to Rose who had intended to go to Sales Hall with Henrietta.
She was not able to do that, but later in the afternoon she set out to
meet her so that she might have company for part of the dark way home.
Afterwards, she could never make up her mind whether she was glad or
sorry she had gone. She had expected to meet Henrietta within a mile
or two of the bridge, and the further she went without a sight of the
small figure walking towards her, the more necessary it became to
proceed, but she felt a deadly sickness of this road. She loved each
individual tree, each bush and field and the view from every point,
but the whole thing she hated. It was the personification of mistake,
disappointment and slow disillusion, but now it was all shrouded in
darkness and she seemed to be walking on nothing, through nothing and
towards nothing. She herself was nothing and she thought of nothing,
though now and then a little wave of anxiety washed over her. Where
was Henrietta?
She became genuinely alarmed when, in the hollow between the track and
the rising fields, she saw a fire and discovered by its light a
caravan, a cart, a huddle of dark figures, a tethered pony, and heard
the barking of dogs. There were gipsies camping in the sheltered dip.
If Henrietta had walked into their midst, she might have been robbed,
she would certainly have been frightened; and Rose stood still,
listening intently.
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