And Leonora would treat her like the whore she was.
Once she said to Florence in the early morning:
"You come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is my proper place.
I know it, thank you."
But even that could not stop Florence.
She went on saying that it was her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the passage of her brief life, and how thankfully she would leave Edward, whom she thought she had brought to a right frame of mind, if Leonora would only give him a chance.
He needed, she said, tenderness beyond anything.
And Leonora would answer—for she put up with this outrage for years—Leonora, as I understand, would answer something like:
"Yes, you would give him up. And you would go on writing to each other in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms.
I know the pair of you, you know.
No.
I prefer the situation as it is."
Half the time Florence would ignore Leonora's remarks.
She would think they were not quite ladylike.
The other half of the time she would try to persuade Leonora that her love for Edward was quite spiritual—on account of her heart.
Once she said:
"If you can believe that of Maisie Maidan, as you say you do, why cannot you believe it of me?"
Leonora was, I understand, doing her hair at that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom.
And she looked round at Florence, to whom she did not usually vouchsafe a glance,—she looked round coolly and calmly, and said:
"Never do you dare to mention Mrs Maidan's name again.
You murdered her.
You and I murdered her between us.
I am as much a scoundrel as you.
I don't like to be reminded of it."
Florence went off at once into a babble of how could she have hurt a person whom she hardly knew, a person whom with the best intentions, in pursuance of her efforts to leave the world a little brighter, she had tried to save from Edward.
That was how she figured it out to herself.
She really thought that.... So Leonora said patiently:
"Very well, just put it that I killed her and that it's a painful subject.
One does not like to think that one had killed someone.
Naturally not.
I ought never to have brought her from India."
And that, indeed, is exactly how Leonora looked at it.
It is stated a little baldly, but Leonora was always a great one for bald statements.
What had happened on the day of our jaunt to the ancient city of M—— had been this:
Leonora, who had been even then filled with pity and contrition for the poor child, on returning to our hotel had gone straight to Mrs Maidan's room.
She had wanted just to pet her.
And she had perceived at first only, on the clear, round table covered with red velvet, a letter addressed to her.
It ran something like:
"Oh, Mrs Ashburnham, how could you have done it?
I trusted you so.
You never talked to me about me and Edward, but I trusted you.
How could you buy me from my husband?
I have just heard how you have—in the hall they were talking about it, Edward and the American lady.
You paid the money for me to come here.
Oh, how could you?
How could you?
I am going straight back to Bunny...." Bunny was Mrs Maidan's husband.
And Leonora said that, as she went on reading the letter, she had, without looking round her, a sense that that hotel room was cleared, that there were no papers on the table, that there were no clothes on the hooks, and that there was a strained silence—a silence, she said, as if there were something in the room that drank up such sounds as there were.
She had to fight against that feeling, whilst she read the postscript of the letter.
"I did not know you wanted me for an adulteress," the postscript began. The poor child was hardly literate.