At table no one referred to Caroline; they were practical and composed
and afterwards, when Sophia and Rose were closeted together, making
arrangements, writing letters to relatives of whom Henrietta had never
heard, interviewing Mr. Batty and a husky personage in black,
Henrietta stole upstairs past Caroline's death chamber and into her
own room.
She was glad to find the pretty housemaid there, tidying the hearth
and dusting the furniture. She wanted to talk to somebody and the
pretty housemaid was sympathetic and discreet. She told Henrietta,
inevitably, of deaths in her own family, and Henrietta was interested
to hear how the housemaid's grandmother had died, actually while she
was saying her prayers.
'And you couldn't have a better end than that, could you, Miss
Henrietta?'
'I suppose not,' Henrietta said, 'but it might depend on what you were
praying for.'
'Oh, she would be saying the usual things, Miss Henrietta, just daily
bread and forgive our trespasses. There was no harm in my grandmother.
It was her husband who broke his neck picking apples. His own apples,'
she said hastily, 'And now poor Mrs. Sales has gone.'
'Mrs. Sales?'
'Yes, Miss Henrietta, I thought you'd know--last night. Her and Miss
Caroline together.' She implied that in this journey they would be
company for each other.
Henrietta found nothing to say, but above the shock of pity she felt
for the woman she had disliked and the awe induced by the name of
death, she was conscious of a load lifted from her mind: she had not
been deserted, her charm had not failed; it was the approach of death
that had held him back.
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