ing masculine. I didn't want to present myself to Nancy Rufford as
a sort of an old maid. That was why, just a fortnight after Florence's
suicide, I set off for the United States.

II

IMMEDIATELY after Florence's death Leonora began to put the leash upon
Nancy Rufford and Edward. She had guessed what had happened under the
trees near the Casino. They stayed at Nauheim some weeks after I went,
and Leonora has told me that that was the most deadly time of her
existence. It seemed like a long, silent duel with invisible weapons,
so she said. And it was rendered all the more difficult by the girl's
entire innocence. For Nancy was always trying to go off alone with
Edward--as she had been doing all her life, whenever she was home for
holidays. She just wanted him to say nice things to her again.

You see, the position was extremely complicated. It was as complicated
as it well could be, along delicate lines. There was the complication
caused by the fact that Edward and Leonora never spoke to each other
except when other people were present. Then, as I have said, their
demeanours were quite perfect. There was the complication caused by the
girl's entire innocence; there was the further complication that both
Edward and Leonora really regarded the girl as their daughter. Or it
might be more precise to say that they regarded her as being Leonora's
daughter. And Nancy was a queer girl; it is very difficult to describe
her to you.

She was tall and strikingly thin; she had a tortured mouth, agonized
eyes, and a quite extraordinary sense of fun. You, might put it that
at times she was exceedingly grotesque and at times extraordinarily
beautiful. Why, she had the heaviest head of black hair that I have ever
come across; I used to wonder how she could bear the weight of it. She
was just over twenty-one and at times she seemed as old as the hills, at
times not much more than sixteen. At one moment she would be talking of
the lives of the saints and at the next she would be tumbling all over
the lawn with the St Bernard puppy. She could ride to hounds like
a Maenad and she could sit for hours perfectly still, steeping
handkerchief after handkerchief in vinegar when Leonora had one of her
headaches. She was, in short, a miracle of patience who could be almost
miraculously impatient. It was, no doubt, the convent training that
effected that. I remember that one of her letters to me, when she was
about sixteen, ran something like: