"I intend to go to my father's."
"Well, that's plain. Why couldn't you tell me that sooner? You mean to go to old Adisham's. But I'll be hanged if I'll go there, to be patronized as a beggarly relation."
"Very well."
"Very well, is it? It's very well that you are to live in one place, and I in another."
"A distance sufficient to protect me from your rudeness would certainly be an advantage."
"Would it, indeed? You really think so, do you? Well, if you think so, it shall be so."
"Very well."
She spoke with a calmness that was perfectly exasperating, and John Stanburne's brain was too much overwrought by the terrible trial of that day for him to bear things with any patience. He was half insane temporarily; he could not bear to see that calm little woman sitting there, with her jarring self-control.
"I say, Lady Helena, if you mean to go to old Adisham's, the sooner you go the better. All this house is crumbling over our heads as if it were rotten."