She took her mother into her arms, stroking her hair, kissing her cheeks and whispering to her: “Darling—darling—it doesn’t make any difference to us—it can’t—it can’t. Nothing can. Nothing.... Nothing!”
Mrs. Trenchard kissed her daughter very quietly, remained in her embrace for a little, then drew herself away and went to her mirror. She tidied her hair, patted her dress, put some eau-de-Cologne on her handkerchief, laid the shawl carefully away in the drawer.
“I must go down now. Father will want his tea. I’ll take the doll—I shan’t have another chance of finishing it.” She walked to the door, then, turning, said with an intensity that was amazing in its sudden vehemence and fire: “No one shall take you from me, Katherine. No one. Let him do what he likes. No one shall take you.”
She did not appear an old woman, then, as she faced her daughter.
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, the family had already gathered together as though it were aware that something had occurred. Mr. Trenchard, Senior, surrounded by his rugs, his especial table, his silver snuff-box (he never took snuff in the drawing-room, but liked his box to be there), a case of spectacles, and the last number of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’. Great Aunt Sarah, Aunt Aggie, Aunt Betty, and Millie. Millie, watching them, was, to her own immense surprise, sorry for them.
Millie, watching them, wondered at herself. What had happened to her? She had returned from Paris, eager to find herself as securely inside the family as she had always been—longing after the wide, vague horizons of the outside world to feel that security. She had laughed at them a little, perhaps, but she had always understood and approved of their motives.
Now she found herself at every turn criticising, wondering, defending against her own intelligence, as though she had been the merest stranger. She loved them—all of them—but—how strange they were! And how terrible of her that she should find them strange! They were utterly unaware of any alteration in her; she seemed to herself to be a spy in their midst....
Happily, however, they were all, this afternoon, most comfortably unaware of any criticism from anyone in the world. They sat about the room, waiting for their tea and saying very little. They knew one another so well that conversation was a mere emphasis of platitudes. Aunt Aggie talked, but nobody listened, unless one of the above-mentioned assurances were demanded.
Her dry, sharp little voice, like the fire and the ticking of the clock, made an agreeable background.
Upon this innocent gathering, so happy and tranquil, Henry burst with his news. He came with all the excited vehemence sprung from his own vision of the lovers. He could see only that; he did not realise that the others had not shared his experience. It was almost as though he had tumbled into the middle of them, so abrupt, so agitated, so incoherent was he!