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 “I don’t know what one means by happiness,” he said briefly, having to step aside in order to avoid a groom with a bucket. “Why do you think I shall be happy? I don’t expect to be anything of the kind. I expect to be rather less unhappy. I shall write a book and curse my charwoman—if happiness consists in that. What do you think?”

She could not answer because they were immediately surrounded by other members of the party—by Mrs. Hilbery, and Mary, Henry Otway, and William.

Rodney went up to Katharine immediately and said to her:

“Henry is going to drive home with your mother, and I suggest that they should put us down half-way and let us walk back.”

Katharine nodded her head. She glanced at him with an oddly furtive expression.

“Unfortunately we go in opposite directions, or we might have given you a lift,” he continued to Denham. His manner was unusually peremptory; he seemed anxious to hasten the departure, and Katharine looked at him from time to time, as Denham noticed, with an expression half of inquiry, half of annoyance. She at once helped her mother into her cloak, and said to Mary:

“I want to see you. Are you going back to London at once? I will write.” She half smiled at Ralph, but her look was a little overcast by something she was thinking, and in a very few minutes the Otway carriage rolled out of the stable yard and turned down the high road leading to the village of Lampsher.

The return drive was almost as silent as the drive from home had been in the morning; indeed, Mrs. Hilbery leant back with closed eyes in her corner, and either slept or feigned sleep, as her habit was in the intervals between the seasons of active exertion, or continued the story which she had begun to tell herself that morning.