tion that Florence worked in Leonora was
extraordinary; it smashed up her whole life and all her chances. It
made her, in the first place, hopeless--for she could not see how, after
that, Edward could return to her--after a vulgar intrigue with a vulgar
woman. His affair with Mrs Basil, which was now all that she had to
bring, in her heart, against him, she could not find it in her to call
an intrigue. It was a love affair--a pure enough thing in its way. But
this seemed to her to be a horror--a wantonness, all the more detestable
to her, because she so detested Florence. And Florence talked....

That was what was terrible, because Florence forced Leonora herself to
abandon her high reserve--Florence and the situation. It appears that
Florence was in two minds whether to confess to me or to Leonora.
Confess she had to. And she pitched at last on Leonora, because if it
had been me she would have had to confess a great deal more. Or, at
least, I might have guessed a great deal more, about her "heart",
and about Jimmy. So she went to Leonora one day and began hinting and
hinting. And she enraged Leonora to such an extent that at last Leonora
said:

"You want to tell me that you are Edward's mistress. You can be. I have
no use for him." That was really a calamity for Leonora, because, once
started, there was no stopping the talking. She tried to stop--but
it was not to be done. She found it necessary to send Edward messages
through Florence; for she would not speak to him. She had to give him,
for instance, to understand that if I ever came to know of his intrigue
she would ruin him beyond repair. And it complicated matters a good deal
that Edward, at about this time, was really a little in love with her.
He thought that he had treated her so badly; that she was so fine. She
was so mournful that he longed to comfort her, and he thought himself
such a blackguard that there was nothing he would not have done to make
amends. And Florence communicated these items of information to Leonora.

I don't in the least blame Leonora for her coarseness to Florence; it
must have done Florence a world of good. But I do blame her for giving
way to what was in the end a desire for communicativeness. You see that
business cut her off from her Church. She did not want to confess what
she was doing because she was afraid that her spiritual advisers
would blame her for deceiving me. I rather imagine that she would have
preferred damnation to