Rose spoke in a
voice heightened by a tone. 'It concerns you both,' she said.
'Ah, then, you needn't say it, need she, Francis?'
'Francis,' she repeated the name with a grave humour, 'this is not
fair to Henrietta.'
'I know that,' he muttered, and Rose saw Henrietta shoot at him a thin
look of scorn.
Henrietta said, 'But I don't care about that, and anyhow, we're not
going to do it any more. We're tired of these meetings'--she faced
him--'aren't we? We had just made up our minds to have no more of
them.'
'I'm glad of that,' said Rose, and she fancied that the hurried
beating of her heart must be plain through the thick stuff of her
coat.
Henrietta laughed, showing little teeth, and Rose thought, 'Her teeth
are too small. They spoil her.'
'No, you need not spy on us any more,' Henrietta said.
Francis made a movement of distaste. He said, as though the words cost
him much labour, 'Henrietta, don't.'
But there seemed to be no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped
forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse's neck in an
impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to get it.
'You think I don't understand,' she said quietly, 'but I do, too
well.' She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of
distrust, she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession
of her own foolishness.
'I don't know whether Francis has told you that he and I were once in
love with one another.
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