The girl flushed, stammered and whimpered as if she had been
personally insulted.
"But if Uncle Edward . . ." she began.
"That man," said Leonora, with an extraordinary bitterness, "would
give the shirt off his back and off mine--and off yours to any . . ."
She could not finish the sentence.
At that moment she had been feeling an extraordinary hatred and
contempt for her husband. All the morning and all the afternoon
she had been lying there thinking that Edward and the girl were
together--in the field and hacking it home at dusk. She had been
digging her sharp nails into her palms.
The house had been very silent in the drooping winter weather.
And then, after an eternity of torture, there had invaded it the
sound of opening doors, of the girl's gay voice saying:
"Well, it was only under the mistletoe." . . . And there was
Edward's gruff undertone. Then Nancy had come in, with feet that
had hastened up the stairs and that tiptoed as they approached the
open door of Leonora's room. Branshaw had a great big hall with
oak floors and tiger skins. Round this hall there ran a gallery upon
which Leonora's doorway gave. And even when she had the worst
of her headaches she liked to have her door open--I suppose so
that she might hear the approaching footsteps of ruin and disaster.
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