She circled her neck with her hands as though she must clasp something, and it would have been too silly to fondle his ugly hat. And he would remember he had forgotten it; he would come back. She dared not see him. “I love him,” she cried out, “too much to want to see him!” She paused, astonished. “I suppose that’s how he feels about me. How wonderful!” She looked round at the furniture, so still and unmoved by the happy bewilderment in which she found herself. The piano was mute; the lamps burned steadily; the chair in which Charles had sat was unconscious of its privilege; even the fire’s flames had subsided; and she was intensely, madly, joyously alive. “It’s too much,” she said, “too much!” And for the first time she was ashamed of her episode with Francis Sales. “Playing at love,” she whispered.
But Charles would be coming back and, tiptoeing as though he might hear her from the street, she picked up his hat and stick and laid them neatly on the step outside the front door.
She slept with the profundity of her happiness and descended to breakfast in a dream. Only the sight of Rose’s tired face reminded her that Aunt Sophia was ill. She had had a bad night, but she was better.
“She’s not going to die, too, is she?” Henrietta asked, and she had a sad vision of Aunt Rose living all alone in Nelson Lodge.
“She may live for a long time, but the doctor says she may die at any moment.”
“I don’t suppose she wants to live.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because of Aunt Caroline—and—other people. But if she dies, whatever will you do?”
The question amused Rose. “Go and see the world at last,” she said. “Perhaps you will come, too.”
Henrietta laughed and flushed and became serious. “She mustn’t die.”