" And they sat, crouching
together in each other's arms, and crying and crying; and they lay
down in the same bed, talking and talking, all through the night.
And all through the night Edward could hear their voices through
the wall. That was how it went. . . . Next morning they were all
three as if nothing had happened. Towards eleven Edward came to
Nancy, who was arranging some Christmas roses in a silver bowl.
He put a telegram beside her on the table. "You can uncode it for
yourself," he said. Then, as he went out of the door, he said: "You
can tell your aunt I have cabled to Mr Dowell to come over. He
will make things easier till you leave." The telegram when it was
uncoded, read, as far as I can remember: "Will take Mrs Rufford
to Italy. Undertake to do this for certain. Am devotedly attached to
Mrs Rufford. Have no need of financial assistance. Did not know
there was a daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out
my duty.--White." It was something like that. Then the household
resumed its wonted course of days until my arrival.
V IT is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. For I ask
myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary,
baffled space of pain--what should these people have done? What,
in the name of God, should they have done?
The end was perfectly plain to each of them--it was perfectly
manifest at this stage that, if the girl did not, in Leonora's phrase,
"belong to Edward," Edward must die, the girl must lose her
reason because Edward died--and, that after a time, Leonora, who
was the coldest and the strongest of the three, would console
herself by marrying Rodney Bayham and have a quiet,
comfortable, good time.
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