sudden, odd intimacy that sprang up between Florence and Mrs
Ashburnham. Because it was, of course, an odd intimacy. If you
look at it from the outside nothing could have been more unlikely
than that Leonora, who is the proudest creature on God's earth,
would have struck up an acquaintanceship with two casual
Yankees whom she could not really have regarded as being much
more than a carpet beneath her feet. You may ask what she had to
be proud of. Well, she was a Powys married to an Ashburnham--I
suppose that gave her the right to despise casual Americans as
long as she did it unostentatiously. I don't know what anyone has
to be proud of. She might have taken pride in her patience, in her
keeping her husband out of the bankruptcy court. Perhaps she did.

At any rate that was how Florence got to know her. She came
round a screen at the corner of the hotel corridor and found
Leonora with the gold key that hung from her wrist caught in Mrs
Maidan's hair just before dinner. There was not a single word
spoken. Little Mrs Maidan was very pale, with a red mark down
her left cheek, and the key would not come out of her black hair.
It was Florence who had to disentangle it, for Leonora was in such
a state that she could not have brought herself to touch Mrs
Maidan without growing sick.

And there was not a word spoken. You see, under those four
eyes--her own and Mrs Maidan's--Leonora could just let herself go
as far as to box Mrs Maidan's ears. But the moment a stranger
came along she pulled herself wonderfully up. She was at first
silent and then, the moment the key was disengaged by Florence
she was in a state to say: "So awkward of me . . . I was just trying
to put the comb straight in Mrs Maidan's hair. . . ."