He didn’t stay that night.
She was crouching on the floor beside her father, her arm thrown across his knees. Her mother had left them there.
“Papa—do you know?”
“Your mother told me.... You’ve done the right thing.”
“You don’t think I’ve been cruel? He said I didn’t think of him.”
“Oh, no, you couldn’t do anything else.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t. It was no use thinking about him. Yet night after night, for weeks and months, she thought, and cried herself to sleep.
By day she suffered from Lizzie’s sharp eyes and Sarah’s brooding pity and Connie Pennefather’s callous, married stare. Only with her father and mother she had peace.
VI
Towards spring Harriett showed signs of depression, and they took her to the south of France and to Bordighera and Rome. In Rome she recovered. Rome was one of those places you ought to see; she had always been anxious to do the right thing. In the little Pension in the Via Babuino she had a sense of her own importance and the importance of her father and mother. They were Mr. and Mrs. Hilton Frean, and Miss Harriett Frean, seeing Rome.