rs and hours:

"I shall go to India as soon as Edward hears from my father. I cannot
talk about these things, because Edward does not wish it."

At that Leonora screamed out and wavered swiftly towards the closed
door. And Nancy found that she was springing out of her chair with
her white arms stretched wide. She was clasping the other woman to her
breast; she was saying:

"Oh, my poor dear; oh, my poor dear." And they sat, crouching together
in each other's arms, and crying and crying; and they lay down in the
same bed, talking and talking, all through the night. And all through
the night Edward could hear their voices through the wall. That was how
it went.... Next morning they were all three as if nothing had happened.
Towards eleven Edward came to Nancy, who was arranging some Christmas
roses in a silver bowl. He put a telegram beside her on the table. "You
can uncode it for yourself," he said. Then, as he went out of the door,
he said: "You can tell your aunt I have cabled to Mr Dowell to come
over. He will make things easier till you leave." The telegram when it
was uncoded, read, as far as I can remember: "Will take Mrs Rufford to
Italy. Undertake to do this for certain. Am devotedly attached to Mrs
Rufford. Have no need of financial assistance. Did not know there was a
daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out my duty.--White."
It was something like that. Then the household resumed its wonted course
of days until my arrival.

V IT is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. For I ask
myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary, baffled
space of pain--what should these people have done? What, in the name of
God, should they have done?

The end was perfectly plain to each of them--it was perfectly manifest
at this stage that, if the girl did not, in Leonora's phrase, "belong to
Edward," Edward must die, the girl must lose her reason because Edward
died--and, that after a time, Leonora, who was the coldest and the
strongest of the three, would console herself by marrying Rodney Bayham
and have a quiet, comfortable, good time. That end, on that night,
whilst Leonora sat in the girl's bedroom and Edward telephoned down
below--that end was plainly manifest. The girl, plainly, was half-mad
already; Edward was half dead; only Leonora, active, persistent,
instinct with her cold passion of energy, was "doing things". What then,
should they have done? worked out in the extincti