A man has confessed to his fiancée that he was unfaithful to his first wife, and she has forgiven him.
When the butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood - asked the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise in the servants' hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman - an attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry.
And it struck me that women in those days must have been as aware of the physicality of male servants, as we would be of any men who are in the same rooms as us. So, if they were attractive, they must have noticed. But I doubt if it was ever mentioned in any books at all. If it had been it would have been to indicate the woman was quite degenerate. And yet here Margaret is a cool and cerebral woman, highly restrained and chaste. Yet she must constantly dissemble even the mildest sexual feelings she might briefly entertain, or as she says 'the sky would fall'.