e. I seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic
fashion, very proper to both of them--or, at any rate, for Edward; she
seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted. I do
not mean to say that she was without character; that was her job, to
do what Edward wanted. So I figured it out, that for those five years,
Edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long
talks and that every now and then they "fell," which would give Edward
an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the Major another
fifty. I don't think that Mrs Basil considered it to be "falling"; she
just pitied him and loved him.

You see, Leonora and Edward had to talk about something during all these
years. You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless
you are an inhabitant of the North of England or the State of Maine. So
Leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of
his estate and discussing them with him. He did not discuss them much;
he was trying to behave prettily. But it was old Mr Mumford--the farmer
who did not pay his rent--that threw Edward into Mrs Basil's arms. Mrs
Basil came upon Edward in the dusk, in the Burmese garden, with all
sorts of flowers and things. And he was cutting up that crop--with his
sword, not a walking-stick. He was also carrying on and cursing in a way
you would not believe.

She ascertained that an old gentleman called Mumford had been ejected
from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free, where
he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent society,
supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the Ashburnham
trustees. Edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts.
Leonora had left them in his dressing-room and he had begun to read
them before taking off his marching-kit. That was how he came to have a
sword. Leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old Mr
Mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving
him seven shillings a week. Anyhow, Mrs Basil had never seen a man in
such a state as Edward was. She had been passionately in love with
him for quite a time, and he had been longing for her sympathy and
admiration with a passion as deep. That was how they came to speak about
it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed
vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. I think
they behaved thems