“I don’t suppose he will notice it,” Henrietta murmured. She felt grateful for her aunt’s forgetfulness, and she said, with an enthusiasm she had not shown for a long time, “You look lovely to-day, Aunt Rose, as if something nice had happened.”
Rose laughed and said, “Nonsense, Henrietta,” in a manner faintly reminiscent of Caroline. And she added quickly, against the invasion of her own thoughts, “And as for Charles, he notices much more than one would think.”
“Oh, I’ve found that out,” Henrietta grieved. “I don’t think people ought to notice—well, that one’s nose turns up.”
“It depends how it does it. Yours is very satisfactory.”
They sparkled at each other, pleased at the ease of their intercourse and quite unaware that these personalities also were reminiscent of the Caroline and Sophia tradition of compliment.
Sophia, drooping over the table, said vaguely, “Yes, very satisfactory,” but she hardly knew to what Rose had referred. She lived in her own memories, but she tried to disguise her distraction and it was always safe to agree with Rose: she had good judgment, unfailing taste. “Rose,” she said more brightly, “I’d forgotten. Susan tells me that Francis Sales has come home.”
Rose said “Yes,” and after the slightest pause, she added, “I saw him this morning.” She did not look at Henrietta. She felt with something like despair that this had occurred at the very moment when they seemed to be re-establishing their friendship, and now Henrietta would be reminded of the unhappy past. She did not look across the table, but, to her astonishment, she heard the girl’s voice with trouble, enmity and anger concentrated in its control, saying quickly, “So that’s the nice thing that’s happened!”
“Very nice,” Sophia murmured. “Poor Francis! He must have been glad to see you.”
Rose’s eyes glanced over Henrietta’s face with a look too proud to be called disdain: she was doubly shocked, first by the girl’s effrontery and then by the truth in her words. She had indeed been feeling indefinitely happy and ignoring the cause. She was, even now, not sure of the cause. She did not know whether it was the change in Francis or the jingling of the chains still sounding in her ears, but there had been a lightness in her heart which had nothing to do with the sense of that approaching freedom on which she had been counting.
She turned to Sophia as though Henrietta had not spoken. “Yes, I think he was glad to see a friend. He has been to Canada to see Christabel’s family. No, he didn’t say how he was, but I thought he looked rather old.”