Mrs. Chump remained on the field.  When Adela begged her papa to tell her how long the lady was to stay, he replied:  “Eh?  By the way, I haven’t asked her;” and retreated from this almost too obvious piece of simplicity, with, “I want you to know her:  I want you to like her—­want you to get to understand her.  Won’t talk about her going just yet.”

If they could have seen a limit to that wholesale slaughter of the Nice Feelings, they might have summoned patience to avoid the desperate step to immediate relief:  but they saw none.  Their father’s quaint kindness and Wilfrid’s treachery had fixed her there, perhaps for good.  The choice was, to let London come and see them dragged through the mire by the monstrous woman, or to seek new homes.  London, they contended, could not further be put off, and would come, especially now that the season was dying.  After all, their parting from one another was the bitterest thing to bear, and as each seemed content to endure it for the good of all, and as, properly considered, they did not bury their ambition by separating, they said farewell to the young delicious dawn of it.  By means of Fine Shades it was understood that Brookfield was to be abandoned.  Not one direct word was uttered.  There were expressions of regret that the village children of Ipley would miss the supervizing eyes that had watched over them—­perchance! at any rate, would lose them.  All went on in the household as before, and would have continued so, but that they had a chief among them.  This was Adela Pole, who found her powers with the occasion.

Adela thought decisively:  “People never move unless they are pushed.”  And when you have got them to move ever so little, then propel; but by no means expect that a movement on their part means progression.  Without propulsion nothing results.  Adela saw what Cornelia meant to do.  It was not to fly to Sir Twickenham, but to dismiss Mr. Barrett.  Arabella consented to write to Edward Buxley, but would not speak of old days, and barely alluded to a misunderstanding; though if she loved one man, this was he.  Adela was disengaged.  She had moreover to do penance, for a wrong committed; and just as children will pinch themselves, pleased up to the verge of unendurable pain, so do sentimentalists find a keen relish in performing secret penance for self-accused offences.  Thus they become righteous to their own hearts, and evade, as they hope, the public scourge.  The wrong committed was (translated out of Fine Shades), that she had made love to her sister’s lover.  In the original tongue—­she had innocently played with the sacred fire of a strange affection; a child in the temple!—­Our penitent child took a keen pinching pleasure in dictating words for Arabella to employ toward Edward.