She loved the place as, had
she been a good Catholic, she would have loved the smell of her
parish church; and indeed there was in her passion for flowers
something of the respect of a religion. They seemed to her the only
things in the world that really respected themselves, unless one made
an exception for Nutkins, who had been in command all through her
mother's time, with whom she had had a real friendship and who had
been affected by their pure example. He was the person left in the
world with whom on the whole she could speak most intimately of the
dead. They never had to name her together--they only said "she"; and
Nutkins freely conceded that she had taught him everything he knew.
When Beatrice and Muriel said "she" they referred to Mrs. Churchley.
Adela had reason to believe she should never marry, and that some day
she should have about a thousand a year. This made her see in the
far future a little garden of her own, under a hill, full of rare and
exquisite things, where she would spend most of her old age on her
knees with an apron and stout gloves, with a pair of shears and a
trowel, steeped in the comfort of being thought mad.
One morning ten days after her scene with Godfrey, on coming back
into the house shortly before lunch, she was met by Miss Flynn with
the notification that a lady in the drawing-room had been waiting for
her for some minutes. "A lady" suggested immediately Mrs. Churchley.
It came over Adela that the form in which her penalty was to descend
would be a personal explanation with that misdirected woman.
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