‘A friend of mine—you don’t know Hubert Eldon, I think?—tells me he has ruined one of the loveliest valleys in England.’
‘Yes, I dare say he has done that. It is an essential part of his protest against social wrong. The earth renews itself, but a dead man or woman who has lived without joy can never be recompensed.’
‘She, of course, is strongly of the same opinion?’
‘Adela is a Socialist.’
Mrs. Boscobel laughed rather satirically.
‘I doubt it.’
Stella, when she went to sit with Adela, either at home or by the sea-shore, often carried a book in her hand, and at Adela’s request she read aloud. In this way Adela first came to know what was meant by literature, as distinguished from works of learning. The verse of Shelley and the prose of Landor fell upon her ears; it was as though she had hitherto lived in deafness. Sometimes she had to beg the reader to pause for that day; her heart and mind seemed overfull; she could not even speak of these new things, but felt the need of lying back in twilight to marvel and repeat melodies.
Mrs. Boscobel happened to approach them once whilst this reading was going on.
‘You are educating her?’ she said to Stella afterwards.
‘Perhaps—a little,’ Stella replied absently.