“No, no. Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Not fair,” he said. “Just weakness. Good night. Be quick.”
She ran along the street and gave the front-door bell a gentle push. To her relief it was the housemaid and not Susan who opened to her. Susan would have looked at her severely, but the housemaid had a welcoming smile, an offer of food if Miss Henrietta had not dined.
Henrietta shook her head. She was going to bed at once. She did not want anything to eat. How was Miss Caroline?
“Not so well to-night, Miss Henrietta. The doctor’s been again and there’s a night-nurse come.”
Henrietta pressed her hands against her heart. Oh, good Charles, wonderful Charles! She did not know how to be grateful enough. She moved meekly, humbly through the hall and up the stairs. All was terribly, portentously still, but in her bedroom there were no signs of the trouble in the house. The fire was lighted, her evening gown had been laid out on the bed, her silk stockings and slippers were in their usual places. Nobody had suspected, nobody had been alarmed; she had stolen back by a miracle into her place.
Yes, Charles Batty was a miracle, there was no other word for him and, by contrast, the image of Francis Sales appeared mean, contemptible. Why had he failed her? His desertion was a blessing, but it was also a slight and perhaps a tribute to the power of Rose. Yes, that was it. She set her little teeth. He had stared at Aunt Rose as though he could not look at her enough, not with the starved expression she had first intercepted long ago, but with a look of wonder, almost of awe. She was nearly middle-aged, yet she could force that from him. Well, she was welcome to anything he could give her, his offerings were no compliment. Henrietta was done with him; she would not think of him again; she had been foolish, she had been wicked, but she was the richer and the wiser for her experience.
She had always been taught that sin brought suffering, yet here she was, warm and comfortable, in possession of a salutary lesson and with the good Charles for a secure friend. It was odd, unnatural, and this variation in her case gave her a pleasant feeling of being a special person for whom the operation of natural laws could be diverted. By the weakness of Francis Sales and the strength of Aunt Rose whom, nevertheless, she could never forgive, she was saved from much unhappiness, and if her mother knew everything in that heaven to which she had surely gone, she must now be weeping tears of thankfulness. Yet Henrietta’s future lay before her rather drearily. She stretched out her arms and legs; she yawned. What was she to do? Being good, as she meant to be, and realizing her sin, as indeed she did, was hardly occupation enough for all her energies.
Her immediate business was to answer a knock at the door. It was Rose who entered. Her natural pallor was overlaid by the whiteness of distress. “Oh, Henrietta, I am glad you have come in.”