t
once, not so much to give Florence the privilege of her intimacy--which
would have been the payment of a kind of blackmail--as to keep Florence
under observation until she could have demonstrated to Florence that
she was not in the least jealous of poor Maisie. So that was why she
had entered the dining-room arm in arm with my wife, and why she had so
markedly planted herself at our table. She never left us, indeed, for a
minute that night, except just to run up to Mrs Maidan's room to beg her
pardon and to beg her also to let Edward take her very markedly out into
the gardens that night. She said herself, when Mrs Maidan came rather
wistfully down into the lounge where we were all sitting: "Now, Edward,
get up and take Maisie to the Casino. I want Mrs Dowell to tell me all
about the families in Connecticut who came from Fordingbridge." For it
had been discovered that Florence came of a line that had actually owned
Branshaw Teleragh for two centuries before the Ashburnhams came there.
And there she sat with me in that hall, long after Florence had gone to
bed, so that I might witness her gay reception of that pair. She could
play up.

And that enables me to fix exactly the day of our going to the town of
M----. For it was the very day poor Mrs Maidan died. We found her dead
when we got back--pretty awful, that, when you come to figure out what
it all means....

At any rate the measure of my relief when Leonora said that she was an
Irish Catholic gives you the measure of my affection for that couple.
It was an affection so intense that even to this day I cannot think of
Edward without sighing. I do not believe that I could have gone on any
more with them. I was getting too tired. And I verily believe, too, if
my suspicion that Leonora was jealous of Florence had been the reason
she gave for her outburst I should have turned upon Florence with the
maddest kind of rage. Jealousy would have been incurable. But Florence's
mere silly jibes at the Irish and at the Catholics could be apologized
out of existence. And that I appeared to fix up in two minutes or so.

She looked at me for a long time rather fixedly and queerly while I was
doing it. And at last I worked myself up to saying:

"Do accept the situation. I confess that I do not like your religion.
But I like you so intensely. I don't mind saying that I have never had
anyone to be really fond of, and I do not believe that anyone has ever
been fond of me, as I belie