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DARK HESTER

it, poor darling,’ said Hester, smiling the bitter smile over her unshed tears. ‘I think it haunted him and tore at him, frightfully, and that the more we were to each other the more he minded. His loveliness unshackled him in so many directions, but somehow it didn’t unshackle him in that.—I mean, he felt about it, really, just as his father would have felt—if you’d had to tell him such a thing. And that was why, when I saw Godfrey again on Saturday night, I was so dreadfully upset. I knew how Clive would feel. That’s why I behaved so devilishly. I was so upset that I had to set my teeth in something; and it seemed to me that Godfrey was sneering at me and taunting me. But he was upset, too. We had parted with the most grisly quarrel—out there—at Chartres, you see;—that’s why I hate Chartres, Monica; do you remember?—and never to run into each other again, or hear of each other, and then find ourselves face to face between a husband who hadn’t forgotten and a mother-in-law who didn’t like you!—Well, you can see for yourself that it needed strong nerves. Godfrey was clever that night, wasn’t he? He played up well. I never dreamed you would find out, or guess, and thought I could manage it all and get him to go away and no one the wiser. I thought, for a day or two, that he’d

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