“Nobody. Nobody tells me anything.”
“Because nobody knows,” she said scornfully. “I haven’t seen him since—” She hesitated. This Charles knew everything, and he said for her, rather wearily, very quietly, “Since his wife died. No. But you will.”
“Yes,” she said defiantly, “I expect I shall. I hope I shall.”
A shudder passed through Charles Batty’s big frame and the words, “Don’t marry him,” reached her ears like a distant muttering of a storm. “You would not be happy.”
“What has happiness to do with it?” she asked with an astonishing young bitterness.
“Ah, if you feel like that,” he said, “if you feel as I do about you, if nothing he does and nothing he says—”
“He says very little,” Henrietta interrupted gloomily, but Charles seemed not to hear.
“If his actions are only like the wind in the trees, fluttering the leaves—yes, I suppose that’s love. The tree remains.”
She dropped her face into her hands. “You’re making me miserable,” she cried.
He removed her hands and held them firmly. “But why?”