“Yes,” Henrietta agreed, but she knew she had betrayed Francis Sales. She knew and Rose knew that she would not have struck him if the kiss had been paternal. “I suppose it was vulgar,” she murmured sadly, yet not without some skill. Rose descended the two stairs without a word and went to the bottom of the flight, but there she paused, saying, “Take off your things and let us have some music.” Henrietta was learning to sing, and in defiance of Charles Batty’s prophecy, she neither squeaked nor gurgled. She piped with a pretty simplicity and with an enjoyment which made her forget herself. Yet she looked charming, standing in the candle-light beside the shining grand piano on which Aunt Rose accompanied her, and to-night she felt they were united in more than the music: they were friends, they were fellow-sufferers, and long after Henrietta had tired of singing, Rose went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame, slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, “I am just going to enjoy life.” Rose raised her head and her enigmatic smile widened a little. Caroline exclaimed, “Good gracious! Why not?” Sophia said gently, “That is what we wish.” Henrietta stiffened herself for questions which did not come. Nobody expressed a desire to know what had caused this solemn declaration: Caroline went on reading, Sophia embroidering; Rose retired to bed. Henrietta was not daunted by this indifference. She persisted in her determination; she cast off all thoughts of ministering like an angel, or revenging like a demon; she enjoyed the gaieties with which the youth of Radstowe amused itself during the summer months; she accompanied her aunts to garden parties, ate ices, had her fortune told in tents, flirted mildly and endured Charles Batty’s peculiar half-apprehensive tyranny. Nothing went amiss with Charles but what he seemed to blame her for it, and while she resented this strange form of attention, she had a compensating conviction that he was really paying tribute and she knew that the absence of his complaints would have left a blank. Fixing her with his pale eyes, he described the bitterness of life in his father’s office, his mismanagement of clients, his father’s sneers, his mother’s sighs; his sufferings in not being allowed to go to Germany and study music. “If I were a man,” Henrietta said, voicing a pathetic faith in masculine ability to break bonds, “I would do what I liked. I’d go to Germany and starve and be happy. A man can do and get anything he really wants.” “Ah, I shall remember that,” he said. “But I can’t go to Germany now,” he added darkly, and when she asked him for a reason, he groaned. “Even you—even you don’t understand me.”