“No, you don’t understand me. Do you understand yourself?” She left her place and put her hands on Henrietta’s shoulders. “Say no more,” she said with unmistakable authority. “Say no more, neither to me nor to anybody else. This is beyond you. And now come into the drawing-room. Don’t cry, Henrietta. I’m not going to be married for some time.”
“I wish I’d known you loved me,” Henrietta sobbed.
“I tried to show you.”
“If I’d known, everything might have been different.”
Rose laughed. “But we don’t want it to be different.”
“You won’t be happy,” Henrietta wailed.
“You, at least,” Rose said sternly, “have done nothing to make me so.”
Henrietta stilled her sobbing. It was quite true. She had taken everything—Aunt Rose’s money, Aunt Rose’s love, her wonderful forbearance and the love of Charles.
“I don’t know what to do,” she cried.
“Come into the drawing-room and we’ll talk about it.”