It was as if she had grown up so quickly that there had not been
time to put her hair up. But she added: "We're no good--my
mother and I."
Leonora said, with her fierce calmness:
"No. No. You're not no good. It's I that am no good. You can't let
that man go on to ruin for want of you. You must belong to him."
The girl, she said, smiled at her with a queer, far-away smile--as if
she were a thousand years old, as if Leonora were a tiny child.
"I knew you would come to that,' she said, very slowly. "But we
are not worth it--Edward and I."
III
NANCY had, in fact, been thinking ever since Leonora had made
that comment over the giving of the horse to young Selmes. She
had been thinking and thinking, because she had had to sit for
many days silent beside her aunt's bed. (She had always thought of
Leonora as her aunt.) And she had had to sit thinking during many
silent meals with Edward. And then, at times, with his bloodshot
eyes and creased, heavy mouth, he would smile at her. And
gradually the knowledge had come to her that Edward did not love
Leonora and that Leonora hated Edward. Several things
contributed to form and to harden this conviction.
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