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Updated: June 3, 2025
Then he silently left the old woman sitting dully by the spirit concealed in its ruined home. In the evening he was resting on the sofa in the drawing-room. Auntie Hamps was near him, at work on some embroidery.
Whereas Clara fatalistically dismissed her father's attitude as only one more of the preposterously unreasonable phenomena which she was constantly meeting in life; and she persevered grimly with her obscene word. "Eh!" said Mrs Hamps enthusiastically, after a trifling pause. "It does me good when I think what a help you'll be to your father in the business, with that clever head of yours."
Darius and Maggie appeared at the garden door. Maggie offered her hand to aid her father, but he repulsed it. Calmly she left him, and came up the garden, out of the deep shadow into the sunshine. She had learnt the news of the engagement, and had fully expressed her feelings about it before Darius arrived at his destination and Mrs Hamps vacated the wicker-chair.
"I shall be down in ten secs," said he. "Father's in the garden," he added, almost kindly. "Seems all right." "Yes," said Maggie, with cheerfulness, and went. He closed the door. Mrs Hamps was in the drawing-room. She had gone into the drawing-room because it was more secret, better suited to conversation of an exquisite privacy than the dining-room a public resort at that hour.
Darius was tiring them all out, in his mild and senseless repose. He remained absolutely still, and the enigma which he so indifferently offered to them might apparently continue for ever; at any rate the doctor's statement that he might keep as he was for days and days, beyond help, hung over the entire household, discouraging and oppressive. The energy of even Auntie Hamps was baffled.
The years were drawing together Mrs Hamps and her namesake. Edwin was often astonished at the increasing resemblance of Clara to her aunt, with whom, thanks to the unconscious intermediacy of babies, she was even indeed quite intimate.
And first Auntie Hamps said, and then Clara, and then even Maggie admitted, that Edwin was sticking too close to business and needed a change, needed rousing. Auntie Hamps urged openly that a wife ought to be found for him. But in a few days the great talkers of the family, Auntie Hamps and Clara, had grown accustomed to Edwin's state, and some new topic supervened.
The procession moved on from room to room, Darius fingering and grunting, Mrs Hamps discovering in each detail the fine flower of utter perfection, and Edwin strolling loosely in the wake of her curls, her mantle, and her abundant black petticoats. He could detect the odour of her kid gloves; it was a peculiar odour that never escaped him, and it reminded him inevitably of his mother's funeral.
He had had the sort of pride in his son that a man may have in an idle, elegant, and absurdly expensive woman. It even tickled him to hear his son called `Master Edwin, and then `Mister Edwin'; just as the fine ceremonious manners of his sister-in-law Mrs Hamps tickled him. His marriage! With all its inevitable disillusions it had been wonderful, incredible. He looked back on it as a miracle.
Edwin felt as though Maggie had surprised them both in some criminal act. They knew that Mr Heve was dead. She did not know. She had to be told. He wished violently that Auntie Hamps had been elsewhere. "Everything all right?" Maggie asked Edwin, surveying the table. "I gave particular orders about the eggs." "As right as rain," said Edwin, putting into his voice a note of true appreciation.
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