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She opened her"I’m terribly sorry about Ada’s death" His face went slack, as if the only thing holding hiize!" she cried, ju up such a painful subject"

Grief was much easier to sympathize with than love, or whatever e before she ht him over to the sofa and patted his hand, just as the sister of a good friend would do Like any acquaintance with a warm affection for a need man

"You should know that I concluded all cere here," he said

Eleanor ed a weak smile

"She was Quaker Did you know that?"

And, when Eleanor shook her head, "Her father perland, of course But I liked her rector, Mr Cumberwell He buried her immediately at St John’s in Westminster Quakers have a very siers around his "I’lad that she found solace"

"I told Cumberwell to take her portion and endow a chapel in her memory He refused because he said she wouldn’t have liked that So we’re giving theHospital instead I don’t want it"

"Ada loved children," Eleanor said soothingly

"I shouldn’t be here with you," he said, "but I couldn’t stop myself"

She resisted the impulse to shrink back on the sofa, to stop the conversation before it could start There was so indecent about all the e she had no right to

"I feel sha for breath "But sha a o because of our love, because of the e were together The sha co to feel ill In soe a faint, in order to force hi, a ring of course, a diaht Alht her own thought, as if someone else had said it, with an echo of shock She was thinking about Gideon Gideon The man she loved The most beautiful man in the world

But when she looked at him now, she saw little to admire The sharp planes of his cheekbones seemed too thin, almost hollowed His chin didn’t have even the shadow of a beard; he hadn’t had facial hair at eighteen, and perhaps he simply never developed it

Some part of her mind insistently compared that to the line of another jaw, another man’s jaw…

"I shouldn’t be here," he said miserably, "but I had to come Because of Villiers"

Eleanor started It was as if he had read her mind

"You can’t ," Gideon said "I couldn’t allow such a thing to happen, couldn’t allow such an abo fore"

Eleanor fruitlessly tried to think of a co for him for years? She would sound like the worst sort of wet hen

But Gideon didn’t seem to require an interlocutor anyway "Ada died without pain," he said

"Wonderful," Eleanor ht response either

"She alking across the floor of the library, they told ht she wasattack was a terrible thing, once it started She would bend over and hack so violently that I felt as if her lungs must be injured"