George Trenchard said: “Philip, what do you say to a drive over to Trezent? It’s a good day and I’ve some business there.”
Aunt Aggie gave him her withered hand to shake with exactly the proud, peevish air that she always used to him. There was a scratch on his face where her rings had cut him; he looked at her rings ... yes, he was surely dreaming. Then there crept to him the conviction that the plot—the family plot—seen before vaguely, mysteriously and uncertainly—was now developing before his eyes as something far deeper, far more soundless, far more determined than he had ever conceived. Mrs. Trenchard, smiling there at the head of the table, knew what she was about. That outburst of Aunt Aggie’s last night had been a slip—They would make no more.
His little quarrel with Katherine had needed no words to mark its conclusion. He loved her, he felt, just twice as deeply as he had loved her before ... he was not sure, though, that he was not now a little—a very little—afraid of her....
In the middle of the week, waking, very early on the most wonderful of all spring mornings, his inspiration came to him.
He got up, and about half-past seven was knocking on Katherine’s door. She spoke to him from within the room.
“Katie!”
“Yes!”
He whispered to her in the half-lit house, across whose floors the light, carrying the scent of the garden-flowers, shook and trembled; he felt a conspirator.
“Look here! You’ve got to dress at once and come off with me somewhere.”