There was the grey light in that brown, small room. And there
appeared to be nothing else in the world. I knew then that Leonora
was about to let me into her full confidence. It was as if--or no, it
was the actual fact that--Leonora with an odd English sense of
decency had determined to wait until Edward had been in his
grave for a full week before she spoke. And with some vague
motive of giving her an idea of the extent to which she must
permit herself to make confidences, I said slowly --and these
words too I remember with exactitude--"Did Florence commit
suicide? I didn't know."
I was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she were
going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range
of things than she had before thought necessary.
So that that was the first knowledge I had that Florence had
committed suicide. It had never entered my head. You may think
that I had been singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may
consider me even to have been an imbecile. But consider the
position.
In such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of many
people running together, of the professional reticence of such
people as hotel-keepers, the traditional reticence of such "good
people" as the Ashburnhams--in such circumstances it is some
little material object, always, that catches the eye and that appeals
to the imagination.
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