.. Just
think how I felt seeing her, white like a sheet, perfectly motionless,
with her thin hands gripping the arms of the chair. I told her it was
all my fault."
I could imagine the motionless dumb figure of the mother in her chair,
there, behind the door, near which the daughter was talking to me.
The silence in there seemed to call aloud for vengeance against an
historical fact and the modern instances of its working. That view
flashed through my mind, but I could not doubt that Miss Haldin had had
an atrocious time of it. I quite understood when she said that she could
not face the night upon the impression of that scene. Mrs. Haldin
had given way to most awful imaginings, to most fantastic and cruel
suspicions. All this had to be lulled at all costs and without loss of
time. It was no shock to me to learn that Miss Haldin had said to her,
"I will go and bring him here at once." There was nothing absurd in that
cry, no exaggeration of sentiment. I was not even doubtful in my "Very
well, but how?"
It was perfectly right that she should think of me, but what could I do
in my ignorance of Mr. Razumov's quarters.
"And to think he may be living near by, within a stone's-throw,
perhaps!" she exclaimed.
I doubted it; but I would have gone off cheerfully to fetch him from the
other end of Geneva.
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