‘Dull! we must all expect to be dull.’
‘There’s nothing worse. I’ve had rheumatic fever, and I say, give me the fever rather than what comes over me at times here. If Marshall had not been so good to me, I do not know what I should have done with myself.’
Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the face, but she did not flinch.
‘Marshall is very good to me, but I was glad when mother and you and your sister came to keep me company when he is not at home. It tired me to have my meals alone: it is bad for the digestion; at least, so he says, and he believes that it was indigestion that was the matter with me. I should be sorry for myself if you were to go away; not that I want to put that forward. Maybe I should never see much more of you: he is rich: you might come here sometimes, but he would not like to have Marshall and mother and me at his house.’
Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.
Suddenly Mrs Marshall took Madge’s hand in her own hands, leaned over her, and in that kind of whisper with which we wake a sleeper who is to be aroused to escape from sudden peril, she said in her ear,—
‘Madge, Madge: for God’s sake leave him!’
‘I have left him.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite.’