Rose laughed. 'Oh, don't say that. I have been glad to think we are.'

'You might be sisters,' said Francis Sales.

This little scene, being played so easily and lightly by this man and
woman, had a nightmare quality for Henrietta. It had the confusion,
the exaggerated horror of an evil dream, without the far-away
consciousness of its unreality. Here she was, in the presence of the
man she loved and it was wicked to love him. She had longed to meet
him and now she wished she might have kept his memory only, the figure
on the horse, the man with the pink orchid in his hand. She had
suspected her Aunt Rose of a secret love affair, she had now
discovered her guilty of sin. The evidence was slight, but Henrietta's
conviction was tremendous. She was horrified, but she was also elated.
This was drama, this was life. She was herself a romantic figure; she
was robbed of her happiness, her youth was blighted; the woman
upstairs was wronged and Henrietta understood why there were knives on
her tongue: she understood the watchfulness of the cat.

Yet, as they sat in the cool drawing-room with its pale flowery
chintz, its primrose curtains, the faded water-colours on the walls
and Aunt Rose pouring tea into the flowered cups, she might, if she
had wished, have been persuaded that she was wrong. Perhaps she had
mistaken that angry, starving look in the man's eyes; it had gone;
nothing could have been more ordinary than his expression and his
conversation. But she knew she was not wrong and she sat there, on the
alert, losing not a glance, not a tone. Her limbs were trembling, she
could not eat and she was astonished that Aunt Rose could nibble
biscuits with such nonchalance, that Francis Sales could eat plum