“No,” Henrietta said stoutly, “not funny at all.” She spoke in a very firm and reasonable voice, as though only her common sense could combat what seemed like insanity in the other. “I think it’s very sad.”
“For me? Oh, yes, but I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of your charming aunt, the most beautiful woman in Radstowe. That’s what I have heard her called. Yet why hasn’t she married? Can’t she find anybody”—the voice was gentle—“to love her? She suspected that mare but she warned nobody. Funny—”
Henrietta had a physical inward trembling. She felt a dreadful rage against the woman on the couch, a sickening disgust, such as she would have felt at looking down a dark, deep well and seeing slime and blind ugliness at the bottom. She felt as though her ears were dirty; she tried to move, but she sat perfectly still and, dreading what would come next, she listened, fascinated.
“Perhaps she is in love with somebody. Does she get many letters, Henrietta? She is very reserved, she doesn’t tell me much; but, of course, I’m interested in her.” She laughed again. “I am very anxious for her happiness. It would comfort me to know anything you can tell me.”
Henrietta managed to stand up. “I know nothing,” she said in a slightly broken voice. “I don’t want to know anything.”
Christabel interrupted smoothly. “Perhaps you are wise or you couldn’t stay happily in that house. They’re all like witches, those women. They frighten me. You must be very brave, Henrietta.”
“I’m very grateful,” Henrietta said; “and I shan’t come here again, no, never. I don’t know what you have been trying to tell me, but I don’t believe it. It’s no good crying. I shall never come back. They’re not witches.” She had a vision of them at the dinner table, Rose like a white flower, Caroline and Sophia jewelled, gaily dressed, a little absurd, oddly distinguished. “Witches! They are my father’s sisters, and I love them.”
“Ah, but you don’t know Rose,” Christabel sobbed. “And don’t say you will never come again. And don’t tell Francis. He would be angry.”
“How could I tell him?” Henrietta asked indignantly. “No, no, I don’t want to see either of you again. I shall go away—go away—” She left the room to the sound of a horrible, faint weeping.
She meant what she had said. She thought she would go away from Radstowe and forget Christabel Sales, forget Francis Sales, whom she would no longer pretend to love; forget those insinuations that Aunt Rose was guilty of a crime. This place and these people were abhorrent to her, she felt she had been poisoned and she rushed down the long avenue where, overhead, the rooks were calling, as though she could only be saved by the clean night air beyond the house. She was shocked; she believed that Christabel was mad; the thought of that warm room where the cat listened, made her gasp, and her horror extended to Francis Sales himself. The place felt wicked, but the clear road stretching before her, the pale evening sky and the sound of her own feet tapping the road restored her.