didn't know, any more than she did herself, how she patronised them.
When she was upstairs with them after dinner Adela could see her look
round the room at the things she meant to alter--their mother's
things, not a bit like her own and not good enough for her. After a
quarter of an hour of this our young lady felt sure she was deciding
that Seymour Street wouldn't do at all, the dear old home that had
done for their mother those twenty years. Was she plotting to
transport them all to her horrible Prince's Gate? Of one thing at
any rate Adela was certain: her father, at that moment alone in the
dining-room with Godfrey, pretending to drink another glass of wine
to make time, was coming to the point, was telling the news. When
they reappeared they both, to her eyes, looked unnatural: the news
had been told.

She had it from Godfrey before Mrs. Churchley left the house, when,
after a brief interval, he followed her out of the drawing-room on
her taking her sisters to bed. She was waiting for him at the door
of her room. Her father was then alone with his fiancee--the word
was grotesque to Adela; it was already as if the place were her home.

"What did you say to him?" our young woman asked when her brother had
told her.

"I said nothing." Then he added, colouring--the expression of her
face was such--"There was nothing to say."

"Is that how it strikes you?"--and she stared at the lamp.

"He asked me to speak to her," Godfrey went on.