A few days later she set out on that road and past those trees which had been the safe witnesses of so much of Rose Mallett’s life, but their safeness lay in their constant muteness, and they had no message for Henrietta. Walking quickly, she rehearsed her coming meeting with Francis Sales, but when she actually met him on the green track, on the very spot where Rose had pulled up her horse in amazement at the scene of transformation, Henrietta, like Rose, had no formal greeting for him.
She said, “The trees! What are you doing with them?”
“Turning them into gold.”
“But they were beautiful.”
“So are lots of things they will buy.” She moved a little under his look, but when he said, “I’m hard up,” she became interested.
“Really? I thought you were frightfully rich. You ought to be with all these belongings.” She looked round at the fields dotted with sheep and cattle, the distant chimneys of Sales Hall, the fallen trees and the team of horses dragging logs under the guidance of workmen in their shirt sleeves. “I know all about being poor,” she said, “but I don’t suppose we mean the same thing by the word. I’ve been so poor—” She stopped. “But there’s a lot of excitement about it. I used to hope I should find a shilling in my purse that I’d forgotten. A shilling! You can do a lot with a shilling. At least I can.”
“I wish you’d tell me how.”
“Pretend you haven’t got it. That’s the beginning. You haven’t got it, so you can’t have what you want.”
“I never have what I want.”
“Then you mustn’t want anything.”