ght she only pretended to hate him in order
to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from
Brindisi was only another attempt to do that--to prove that she had
feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal. I don't
know. I leave it to you. There is another point that worries me a good
deal in the aspects of this sad affair. Leonora says that, in desiring
that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to
love him, Edward was a monster of selfishness. He was desiring the ruin
of a young life. Edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing
that the girl's love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did
nothing by word or by action to keep Nancy's love alive, he couldn't be
called selfish. Leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish
nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct. I can't make
out which of them was right. I leave it to you.

It is, at any rate, certain that Edward's actions were perfectly--were
monstrously, were cruelly--correct. He sat still and let Leonora take
away his character, and let Leonora damn him to deepest hell, without
stirring a finger. I daresay he was a fool; I don't see what object
there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary.
Still there it is. And there it is also that all those three presented
to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people. I assure
you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, I
never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that
good opinion. And even when I look back, knowing the circumstances, I
can't remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed
them. I can't remember, right up to the dinner, when Leonora read out
that telegram--not the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand.
It was just a pleasant country house-party.

And Leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than that--she kept
it up as far as I was concerned until eight days after Edward's funeral.
Immediately after that particular dinner--the dinner at which I
received the announcement that Nancy was going to leave for India on the
following day--I asked Leonora to let me have a word with her. She took
me into her little sitting-room and I then said--I spare you the record
of my emotions--that she was aware that I wished to marry Nancy; that
she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a