There are very decent parlour-maids.
And, suddenly, there came into her mind the conviction that
Maisie Maidan had a real passion for Edward; that this would
break her heart--and that she, Leonora, would be responsible for
that. She went, for the moment, mad. She clutched me by the
wrist; she dragged me down those stairs and across that
whispering Rittersaal with the high painted pillars, the high
painted chimney-piece. I guess she did not go mad enough.
She ought to have said:
"Your wife is a harlot who is going to be my husband's mistress . .
." That might have done the trick. But, even in her madness, she
was afraid to go as far as that. She was afraid that, if she did,
Edward and Florence would make a bolt of it, and that, if they did
that, she would lose forever all chance of getting him back in the
end. She acted very badly to me.
Well, she was a tortured soul who put her Church before the
interests of a Philadelphia Quaker. That is all right--I daresay the
Church of Rome is the more important of the two.
A week after Maisie Maidan's death she was aware that Florence
had become Edward's mistress. She waited outside Florence's door
and met Edward as he came away.
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