I want Mrs Dowell to tell me all about the families
in Connecticut who came from Fordingbridge." For it had been
discovered that Florence came of a line that had actually owned
Branshaw Teleragh for two centuries before the Ashburnhams
came there. And there she sat with me in that hall, long after
Florence had gone to bed, so that I might witness her gay reception
of that pair. She could play up.
And that enables me to fix exactly the day of our going to the town
of M----. For it was the very day poor Mrs Maidan died. We found
her dead when we got back--pretty awful, that, when you come to
figure out what it all means. . . .
At any rate the measure of my relief when Leonora said that she
was an Irish Catholic gives you the measure of my affection for
that couple. It was an affection so intense that even to this day I
cannot think of Edward without sighing. I do not believe that I
could have gone on any more with them. I was getting too tired.
And I verily believe, too, if my suspicion that Leonora was jealous
of Florence had been the reason she gave for her outburst I should
have turned upon Florence with the maddest kind of rage.
Jealousy would have been incurable.
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