Rose looked at her without envy or malice or covetousness, but
with an extraordinary interest, trying to find what likeness to
herself and what differences had attracted Francis Sales.
There was the dark hair, curly where hers was straight, dark eyes
instead of grey ones, the same warm pallor of the skin, in Henrietta's
case slightly overlaid with pink; but the mouth, ah! it must be the
mouth and what it meant that made the alluring difference. Henrietta's
mouth was soft, red and mutinous; in her father it had been a blemish,
half hidden by the foreign cut of moustache and beard, but in
Henrietta it was a beauty and a warning. Rose had never properly
studied that mouth before and under the fixity of her gaze Henrietta's
eyelids fluttered upwards. There were shadows under her eyes and it
seemed to Rose that she had changed a little. She must have changed.
Rose had never been in the arms of Francis Sales; she shuddered now at
the thought, but she knew that she, too, would have been different
after that experience.
She looked at Henrietta with the sadness of her desire to help her,
the fear of her inability to do it; and Henrietta looked back with a
hint of defiance, the symbol of her attitude to the cruel world in
which fond lovers were despised and love had a hard road. Rose
restrained an impulse to lean across the table and say quietly, 'I saw
you to-night with Francis Sales and I am sorry for you. He told me I
should not let you meet him.
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