nora opened her eyes, lying sideways, with her face upon the black
and gold pillow of the sofa that was drawn half across the great
fireplace.

"I thought," Nancy said, "I never imagined.... Aren't marriages
sacraments? Aren't they indissoluble? I thought you were married. ..
and..." She was sobbing. "I thought you were married or not married as
you are alive or dead." "That," Leonora said, "is the law of the church.
It is not the law of the land...."

"Oh yes," Nancy said, "the Brands are Protestants." She felt a sudden
safeness descend upon her, and for an hour or so her mind was at rest.
It seemed to her idiotic not to have remembered Henry VIII and the basis
upon which Protestantism rests. She almost laughed at herself.

The long afternoon wore on; the flames still fluttered when the maid
made up the fire; the St Bernard awoke and lolloped away towards the
kitchen. And then Leonora opened her eyes and said almost coldly:

"And you? Don't you think you will get married?"

It was so unlike Leonora that, for the moment, the girl was frightened
in the dusk. But then, again, it seemed a perfectly reasonable question.
"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know that anyone wants to marry
me."

"Several people want to marry you," Leonora said.

"But I don't want to marry," Nancy answered. "I should like to go on
living with you and Edward. I don't think I am in the way or that I am
really an expense. If I went you would have to have a companion. Or,
perhaps, I ought to earn my living...."

"I wasn't thinking of that," Leonora answered in the same dull tone.
"You will have money enough from your father. But most people want to be
married."

I believe that she then asked the girl if she would not like to marry
me, and that Nancy answered that she would marry me if she were told to;
but that she wanted to go on living there. She added:

"If I married anyone I should want him to be like Edward."

She was frightened out of her life. Leonora writhed on her couch and
called out: "Oh, God!..."

Nancy ran for the maid; for tablets of aspirin; for wet handkerchiefs.
It never occurred to her that Leonora's expression of agony was for
anything else than physical pain.

You are to remember that all this happened a month before Leonora went
into the girl's room at night. I have been casting back again; but I
cannot help it. It is so difficult to keep all these people going. I
tell you about Leonora and bring her up to da