They were standing together in the hall and against the white panelled walls, the figure of Rose, in the austere riding habit, one gauntletted hand holding her crop, the other resting lightly on her hip, had an heroic aspect, like a statue in dark marble; but her eyes did not offer the blank gaze, the calm effrontery of stone: they looked at Henrietta with something like appeal against this obsession of the cat. “Oh, I’m glad the cat’s gone,” Henrietta murmured. “What happened to it?” Rose shook her head. “It disappeared.” They stared at each other until Henrietta said, “But all the same, I don’t want to go.” And then, because Rose would not help her out, she was obliged to say, “It’s Mr. Sales.” Her voice dropped. “I haven’t seen him since I hit him.” Rose turned to go upstairs. “I shouldn’t think too much of that.” “You don’t think it matters?” “No.” Henrietta looked after her and followed her for a step. “You think I may go?” Her voice was dull under her effort to control it. She felt that the stately figure moving up the stairs was deliberately leaving her to face a danger, sanctioning her desire to meet it. She felt her fate was in the answer made by Rose. “I think you can take care of yourself perfectly well, Henrietta,” and like a sigh, another sentence floated from the landing where Rose stood, out of sight: “You are not like me.” This was a mysterious and astonishing remark. Henrietta did not understand it and in her excited realization that the door so carefully locked by her own hand had been opened. Aunt Rose, she did not try to understand it. Aunt Rose had said she was able to take care of herself, and it was true, but honesty and a weak clinging to safety urged her to answer, “But you see, you see I don’t want to do it!” These words were not uttered. She stood, looking up towards the empty landing with a hand pressed against her heart. It was beating fast. The spirit of Reginald Mallett, subdued in his daughter for some months, seemed to be fluttering in her breast and it was Aunt Rose who had waked it up. It was not Henrietta’s fault, she was not responsible; and suddenly, the ordinary happiness she had been enjoying was transferred into an irrational joy. She went singing up the stairs, and Rose, sitting in her room in a state of limpness she would never have allowed anybody to see, heard a sound as innocent as if a bird had waked to a sunny dawn.