She was not hard, she was not cruel—her own time would come when she would cry for sympathy and would not find it, and must set her teeth because her day was past ... now was her day—She seized it fiercely.
Very quietly she went downstairs....
She opened the drawing-room door: as she entered all their eyes met her and she knew at once, as she saw Henry’s, that he was expecting her announcement.
She looked across at her mother.
“Katherine’s room’s empty,” she said. “There’s no one there at all.” She hesitated a moment, then added: “There was this note for you, Mother, on her dressing-table.”
She went across the room and gave it to her mother. Her mother took it; no one spoke.
Mrs. Trenchard read it; for a dreadful moment she thought that she was going to give way before them all, was going to cry out, to scream, to rush wildly into the road to stop the fugitives, or slap Aunt Aggie’s face. For a dreadful moment the battle of her whole life to obtain the mastery of herself was almost defeated—then, blindly, obeying some impulse with which she could not reason, of which she was scarcely conscious, some strong call from a far country, she won a triumphant victory.
“It’s from Katherine!” she said. “The child’s mad. She’s gone up to London.”
“London!” George Trenchard cried.
“London!” cried Aunt Aggie.