Branshaw Manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and
pine-woods on the fringe of the dip. The immense wind, coming
from across the forest, roared overhead. But the view from the
window was perfectly quiet and grey. Not a thing stirred, except a
couple of rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. It was
Leonora's own little study that we were in and we were waiting for
the tea to be brought. I, as I said, was sitting in the deep chair,
Leonora was standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at
the end of the window-blind cord desultorily round and round.
She looked across the lawn and said, as far as I can remember:

"Edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on
the lawn."

I understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short grass
in England. And then she turned round to me and said without any
adornment at all, for I remember her exact words:

"I think it was stupid of Florence to commit suicide."

I cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two
seemed to have at that moment. It wasn't as if we were waiting for
a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal--it was just that
there was nothing to wait for. Nothing. There was an extreme
stillness with the remote and intermittent sound of the wind.
There was the grey light in that brown, small room. And there
appeared to be nothing else in the world. I knew then that Leonora
was about to let me into her full confidence. It was as if--or no, it
was the actual fact that--Leonora with an odd English sense of