Henrietta gulped. She looked steadily at Rose, and on her lips certain words began to form themselves, but she did not utter them, and instead of saying as she intended, “Yes, I went across the bridge and into those woods on the other side,” she merely said, “Yes, yes, thank you,” and smiled back. It had been impossible not to smile and she was angry with Aunt Rose for making her a hypocrite. Perhaps she had smiled like that in the wood and she did not look so very old. Even the flames of the candles, throwing her face into strong relief as she leaned forward, did not reveal any lines. “Don’t walk too much, child,” Caroline said. “It enlarges the feet. Girls nowadays can wear their brothers’ shoes and men don’t like that. Have I ever told you”—Caroline was given to repetition of her stories—“how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?” “Yes, dear,” Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she would like Henrietta to know of them. “Dear child,” she murmured vaguely. “We have our shoes made for us,” Caroline went on. “It’s necessary.” She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation. Rose laughed. She said, “Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health is better than tiny feet.” Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life. They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed; they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she felt a bitterness against them all. “Nonsense, Rose, what do you know about it?” Caroline asked. “You’re a nun, that’s what you are.” “Ah, lovely!” Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in the wood, raised her dark eyebrows sceptically. “Lovely! Rubbish! A nun, and the first in the family. All our women,” Caroline turned to Henrietta, “have broken hearts. They can’t help it. It’s in the blood. You’ll do it yourself. All except Rose. And our men—” she guffawed; “yes, even the General—but if I tell you about our men Sophia will be shocked.” “The men!” Henrietta straightened herself and looked round the table. Her dark eyes shone, and the anger she was powerless to display against Aunt Rose, the remembrance of her own and her mother’s struggles, found an outlet. “You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. I don’t think it is funny. Haven’t I suffered through one of them? My father, he wasn’t anything to boast about.”