He was staring at her and his mouth moved mechanically. “No, I didn’t get it by the first post. Perhaps it’s there now.” With his eyes still fixed on her, he moved back a step. “No.” Rose smiled. “Don’t go and get it. Fortunately you are here. I want to talk to you, Henrietta, please—” Her voice was gentle, she leaned forward in the saddle with a charming gesture of request, but Henrietta shook her head. She was antagonized by that charm which was holding Francis’s eyes. A loosened curl had fallen over her forehead, giving to the severity of her dress, copied from that portrait of her father, a dishevelling touch, as though a young lady were suddenly discovered to be a gipsy in an evil frame of mind. “If it’s anything to do with me, I’m going to stay,” she said. “If it hasn’t, I’ll go.” She looked at Francis and added, between her teeth, “But it must have.” Those words and that look claimed him for her own. Rose lifted her chin and looked over the two heads, the uncovered one of Francis Sales and Henrietta’s, with her hat a little askew, and, absurdly, Rose remembered that the child had washed her hair the night before: that was why the hat was crooked and the curl loose, making the scene undignified and funny above the pain of it. Rose spoke in a voice heightened by a tone. “It concerns you both,” she said. “Ah, then, you needn’t say it, need she, Francis?” “Francis,” she repeated the name with a grave humour, “this is not fair to Henrietta.” “I know that,” he muttered, and Rose saw Henrietta shoot at him a thin look of scorn. Henrietta said, “But I don’t care about that, and anyhow, we’re not going to do it any more. We’re tired of these meetings”—she faced him—“aren’t we? We had just made up our minds to have no more of them.” “I’m glad of that,” said Rose, and she fancied that the hurried beating of her heart must be plain through the thick stuff of her coat. Henrietta laughed, showing little teeth, and Rose thought, “Her teeth are too small. They spoil her.” “No, you need not spy on us any more,” Henrietta said. Francis made a movement of distaste. He said, as though the words cost him much labour, “Henrietta, don’t.” But there seemed to be no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse’s neck in an impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to get it. “You think I don’t understand,” she said quietly, “but I do, too well.” She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of distrust, she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession of her own foolishness.