re. They might
just as well have said, "You're practically in your grave." And
assuredly they were not without influence on Maggie's deportment. The
curious thing was that it was impossible to decide whether Darius
loathed, or whether he liked, to be so treated. His face was an enigma.
However, he was less gloomy.

Then also the evening had necessarily been full of secret conferences.
What would you? Each had to relate privately the things that he or she
knew or had heard or had imagined. And there were questions of urgency
to be discussed. For example the question of the specialist. They were
all positively agreed, Edwin found, that a specialist was unnecessary.
Darius was condemned beyond hope or argument. There he sat, eating and
talking, in the large, fine house that he had created out of naught,
looking not at all like a corpse; but he was condemned. The doctor had
convinced them. Besides, did not everybody know what softening of the
brain was? "Of course, if he thinks he would prefer to have a
specialist, if he has the slightest wish--" This from Auntie Hamps.
There was the question, further, of domestic service. Mrs Nixon's
niece had committed the folly of marriage, and for many months Maggie
and the old servant had been `managing;' but with a crotchety invalid
always in the house, more help would be indispensable. And still
further--should Darius be taken away for a period to the sea, or Buxton,
or somewhere? Maggie said that nothing would make him go, and Clara
agreed with her. All these matters, and others, had to be kept away
from the central figure; they were all full of passionate interest, and
they had to be debated, in tones hushed but excited, in the hall, in the
kitchen, upstairs, or anywhere except in the dining-room. The excuses
invented by the conspiring women for quitting and entering the
dining-room, their fatuous air of innocent simplicity, disgusted Edwin.
And he became curter and curter, as he noticed the new deference which
even Clara practised towards him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

The adieux were distressing. Clara, with her pale sharp face and
troubled eyes, clasped Darius round the neck, and almost hung on it.
And Edwin thought: "Why doesn't she tell him straight out he's done
for?" Then she retired and sought her husband's arm with the conscious
pride of a wife fruitful up to the limits set by nature. And then