ea-planting
estate in Ceylon. His letter was pathetic because it was so brief, so
inarticulate, and so business-like. He had gone down to the boat to meet
his daughter, and had found his daughter quite mad. It appears that at
Aden Nancy had seen in a local paper the news of Edward's suicide. In
the Red Sea she had gone mad. She had remarked to Mrs Colonel Luton,
who was chaperoning her, that she believed in an Omnipotent Deity. She
hadn't made any fuss; her eyes were quite dry and glassy. Even when she
was mad Nancy could behave herself.

Colonel Rufford said the doctor did not anticipate that there was any
chance of his child's recovery. It was, nevertheless, possible that if
she could see someone from Branshaw it might soothe her and it might
have a good effect. And he just simply wrote to Leonora: "Please come
and see if you can do it."

I seem to have lost all sense of the pathetic; but still, that simple,
enormous request of the old colonel strikes me as pathetic. He was
cursed by his atrocious temper; he had been cursed by a half-mad wife,
who drank and went on the streets. His daughter was totally mad--and yet
he believed in the goodness of human nature. He believed that Leonora
would take the trouble to go all the way to Ceylon in order to soothe
his daughter. Leonora wouldn't. Leonora didn't ever want to see Nancy
again. I daresay that that, in the circumstances, was natural enough.
At the same time she agreed, as it were, on public grounds, that someone
soothing ought to go from Branshaw to Ceylon. She sent me and her old
nurse, who had looked after Nancy from the time when the girl, a child
of thirteen, had first come to Branshaw. So off I go, rushing through
Provence, to catch the steamer at Marseilles. And I wasn't the least
good when I got to Ceylon; and the nurse wasn't the least good. Nothing
has been the least good. The doctors said, at Kandy, that if Nancy could
be brought to England, the sea air, the change of climate, the voyage,
and all the usual sort of things, might restore her reason. Of course,
they haven't restored her reason. She is, I am aware, sitting in the
hall, forty paces from where I am now writing. I don't want to be in the
least romantic about it. She is very well dressed; she is quite quiet;
she is very beautiful. The old nurse looks after her very efficiently.

Of course you have the makings of a situation here, but it is all very
humdrum, as far as I am concerned. I should marry