Part 1 - The Present - Chapter 5 Summary

Chapter 5 - Once out of Madame Fisher's room, Henrietta takes a moment to collect herself, dreading going back downstairs to Leopold and thinking about her older sister Caroline whose heart had once been broken like Miss Fisher's, but by a married man. Why could Miss Fisher's heart, she wonders, not mend like Caroline's, who had married a successful man? She also reflects on the unease that resulted from her conversation with Madame Fisher, whose "eyes, her indifferent way of talking, made Henrietta feel that nothing was going on - never had, never would..." Narration also comments that Henrietta, reflecting on the amount of feeling and history she had just encountered, looked at "the bar-like stripes of the paper [and] felt a house like this was too small for so much to happen in...