So Aunt Rose was going to be married while
Henrietta was deserved. 'Not to Francis Sales?' she whispered.
'Yes, to Francis Sales.'
She had a wild moment of anger, succeeded by horror for Aunt Rose. Was
she stupid? Was she insensible? And Henrietta said, 'But you can't,
Aunt Rose, you can't.' Her distress and a kind of envy gave her
courage. 'He isn't good enough. He played with you and then with me
and you said there was some one else.' The figure by the mantelpiece
was so still that Henrietta became convinced of the potency of her own
words, and she went on: 'You know everything about him and you can't
marry him. How can you marry him?'
A sound, like the faint and distant wailing of the wind, came out of
the shadows into which Rose had retreated: 'Ah, how?'
'And you're going to leave me--for him!'
'Yes--for him.'
'Aunt Rose, you would be happier with me.'
Again there came that faint sound. 'Perhaps.'
'I'd try to be kinder to you. I don't understand you.'
'No, you don't understand me. Do you understand yourself?' She
left her place and put her hands on Henrietta's shoulders. 'Say no
more,' she said with unmistakable authority. 'Say no more, neither to
me nor to anybody else. This is beyond you. And now come into
the drawing-room. Don't cry, Henrietta. I'm not going to be married
for some time.'
'I wish I'd known you loved me,' Henrietta sobbed.
'I tried to show you.'
'If I'd known, everything might have been different.
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