Mrs. Severn listlessly submitted to the vehement kiss with which Anna finished her lecture.
'When you quote Satan I am at home, but I know nothing of Hodge,' she said in her slow mellifluous voice.
Anna laughed. It was like demonstrating logic to a jelly-fish to argue with Clothilde.
'I really believe that's a fact,' she said, 'though Hodge lives at your doors, and we'll hope Satan has no foothold in the neighbourhood. But how profane we are! How shocked Canon Tremenheere would be if he heard us! By the bye, do you know his sister Julia's husband is dead—died after a few weeks' illness?'
'What could she expect when she married again?'
'He was a strong man and she has been so ailing. What sorrows she has had!'
'Sorrows? And if she has, she has had great joys too.'
'Oh Clothilde! Well, let us hope that will console her now. Do you think it would console you?'
'Me? How can I say, Anna? I know neither, I have had neither. The superlative does not enter into my experience of life.'