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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"Fortitude"

If Peter would insist on having those horrid
Cornishmen.... At heart she connected that dreadful day when those horrible
men had played about in the nursery with baby's death. Of course it was
enough to kill any baby.
So, ultimately, it all came back to Peter's fault. Clare found real
satisfaction in the thought. Meanwhile she emphatically stated her desire
to be happy again.
She stated it always in Peter's absence, feeling that he would, in no way,
understand her. "It can't help poor dear little Stephen that we should go
on being melancholy and doing nothing. That's only morbid, isn't it,
mother?"
Mrs. Rossiter entirely agreed, as indeed she always agreed with anything
that Clare suggested.
"The dear thing does look lovely in black, though," she confided to Mrs.
Galleon. "Mr. Cardillac couldn't take his eyes off her yesterday at
luncheon."
Mrs. Rossiter and Jerry Cardillac had, during the last year, become the
very best of friends. Peter was glad to see that it was so. Peter couldn't
pretend to care very deeply about his mother-in-law, but he felt that it
would do her all the good in the world to see something of old Cards. It
would broaden her understanding, give her perhaps some of that charity
towards the whole world that was one of Cards' most charming features.
Cards, in fact, had been so much in the house lately that he might be
considered one of the family.


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