As if she were bending a large iron rod with sheer force of will, Henrie curved her lips upward into a pleasant smile. She had used all her

powers to refuse Mrs. Elton’s hospitality.

“You must come back with us to the vicarage for a cold supper. The dining room is perhaps not as spacious as I might have wished, but there will certainly be room for our little party of intimates to gather and have some pressed tongue and cheese. And you will find the drawing room, I believe, much improved since your last visit there,” that lady had said to the gathered group.

Henrie’s last visit there was when it had been her own home, of course, more than twenty years ago. “I have had all the windows refitted against those terrible drafts and I got rid of that hideous blue wallpaper,” Mrs. Elton continued on. “I declare it made me quite seasick every time I entered the room—so dowdy. I said to Mr. E, my dear, I don’t ask for much, but I do ask for flocked silver papers in the drawing room. For that indispensable sense of gaiety and elegance. You will all have to tell me what you think, and be honest, mind—I have no patience with toadeaters. What I like is honest discussion on matters of taste between friends!”

As a matter of taste, pressed tongue was one of Henrie’s favorites, and she hadn’t had it in a long time. But to go as a guest to this of all places, in her current state, the state of having been flayed alive in public, placed, skin aflap, bleeding beneath the microscope of derision, she did not, on this particular afternoon, think she could bear it.

Instead, against all her self-imposed rules to accept with effusions whatever charity was offered, she asked to be let down from the carriage at any convenient spot. They were on the road from Box Hill, now entering Highbury. Straight ahead would lead them to the vicarage; a left detour would drop Henrie home.

“Just here is fine, I can certainly walk through the village to our little refuge—please, I must beg you do not go out of your way, there’s certainly no reason to put your kind coachman to any trouble—And I would hate to think I had caused any delay to your entertainment—Now, I must positively insist—ah, you are stopping just here, exactly right. It is nothing but a brief step to our humble home. You have been too kind. Jane, I will see you after your lovely supper. Mrs. Elton, thank you so much for a wonderful—” At this point in her discourse, Henrie was tumbled from the carriage like a bale of hay by Mr. Elton, who did not pause his conversation nor break eye contact with his wife as he handed her out, merely raising a hand in absent salute over his shoulder as he climbed back in. No microscope here, then. She would slowly and discreetly make her way through the village, balancing her self-possession like an overfull glass of water, a trembling convexity at the top, being careful not to weep on the street. Weep on the street. Was that amusing, a rhyme? She must remember to tell Jane. Or maybe not; Henrie worried she was losing her sense of judgment. She nodded and smiled at the few people she met, “How do you do, dreadfully hot.” No more. Her throat was so tight with holding back her sobs that it felt like there were ribbons wound all around it, like she was choking.