d as they approached the open door of Leonora's
room. Branshaw had a great big hall with oak floors and tiger skins.
Round this hall there ran a gallery upon which Leonora's doorway gave.
And even when she had the worst of her headaches she liked to have her
door open--I suppose so that she might hear the approaching footsteps
of ruin and disaster. At any rate she hated to be in a room with a shut
door.

At that moment Leonora hated Edward with a hatred that was like hell,
and she would have liked to bring her riding-whip down across the girl's
face. What right had Nancy to be young and slender and dark, and gay at
times, at times mournful? What right had she to be exactly the woman
to make Leonora's husband happy? For Leonora knew that Nancy would have
made Edward happy.

Yes, Leonora wished to bring her riding-whip down on Nancy's young face.
She imagined the pleasure she would feel when the lash fell across those
queer features; the plea sure she would feel at drawing the handle at
the same moment toward her, so as to cut deep into the flesh and to
leave a lasting wheal.

Well, she left a lasting wheal, and her words cut deeply into the girl's
mind....

They neither of them spoke about that again. A fortnight went by--a
fortnight of deep rains, of heavy fields, of bad scent. Leonora's
headaches seemed to have gone for good. She hunted once or twice,
letting herself be piloted by Bayham, whilst Edward looked after the
girl. Then, one evening, when those three were dining alone, Edward
said, in the queer, deliberate, heavy tones that came out of him in
those days (he was looking at the table):

"I have been thinking that Nancy ought to do more for her father. He is
getting an old man. I have written to Colonel Rufford, suggesting that
she should go to him."

Leonora called out:

"How dare you? How dare you?"

The girl put her hand over her heart and cried out: "Oh, my sweet
Saviour, help mel" That was the queer way she thought within her mind,
and the words forced themselves to her lips. Edward said nothing.

And that night, by a merciless trick of the devil that pays attention
to this sweltering hell of ours, Nancy Rufford had a letter from her
mother. It came whilst Leonora was talking to Edward, or Leonora would
have intercepted it as she had intercepted others. It was an amazing and
a horrible letter.. ..

I don't know what it contained. I just average out from its effects on
Nancy that her mother, ha