"I'll tell you what I've come for," said the apparition. "I've come
to ask you to intercede." She wasn't an actress; an actress would
have had a nicer voice.
"To intercede?" Adela was too bewildered to ask her to sit down.
"With your father, you know. He doesn't know, but he'll have to."
Her "have" sounded like "'ave." She explained, with many more such
sounds, that she was Mrs. Godfrey, that they had been married seven
mortal months. If Godfrey was going abroad she must go with him, and
the only way she could go with him would be for his father to do
something. He was afraid of his father--that was clear; he was
afraid even to tell him. What she had come down for was to see some
other member of the family face to face--"fice to fice," Mrs. Godfrey
called it--and try if he couldn't be approached by another side. If
no one else would act then she would just have to act herself. The
Colonel would have to do something--that was the only way out of it.
What really happened Adela never quite understood; what seemed to be
happening was that the room went round and round. Through the blur
of perception accompanying this effect the sharp stabs of her
visitor's revelation came to her like the words heard by a patient
"going off" under ether. She afterwards denied passionately even to
herself that she had done anything so abject as to faint; but there
was a lapse in her consciousness on the score of Miss Flynn's
intervention.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55