She laid down the letter and stirred her tea absently, her mind full of
snow-capped sierras, and clear blue air, and peach forests, and all the
wonders of that wonderland. And Emmy stirred her tea, too, in an absent
manner, but her mind was filled with the most terrible thoughts wherewith a
woman's mind can be haunted.




CHAPTER IX


Septimus had never seen a woman faint before. At first he thought Emmy was
dead, and rubbed agonized hands together like a fly. When he realized what
had happened, he produced a large jack-knife which he always carried in his
trousers pocket--for the purpose, he explained, of sharpening pencils--and
offered it to Zora with the vague idea that the first aid to fainting women
consisted in cutting their stay-laces. Zora rebuked him for futility, and
bade him ring the bell for the maid.

It was all very sudden. The scene had been one that of late had grown so
familiar: Zora and Septimus poring over world itineraries, the latter full
of ineffectual suggestion and irrelevant reminiscence, and Emmy reading by
the fire. On this occasion it was the _Globe_ newspaper which Septimus, who
had spent the day in London on an unexecuted errand to his publisher, had
brought back with him. Evening papers being luxuries in Nunsmere, he had
hidden it carefully from Wiggleswick, in order to present it to the ladies.
Suddenly there was a rustle and a slither by the fire-place, and Emmy, in a
dead faint, hung over the arm of the chair. In her hand she grasped the
outer sheet of the paper. The inner sheet, according to the untidy ways of