"
Indeed, allow Mrs. Rossiter two consecutive hours of peace and quiet, she,
sitting like the personification of the English climate, alone before her
fire, and she could make any one into anything--once made so they remained.
It mattered nothing to her that poor Peter was, during these weeks, the
most subdued and gently courteous of husbands--that was as it might be (a
favourite phrase of hers). She knew him ... and, so knowing, waited for the
inevitable end.
But the more certain she was of his villainous possibilities the more
placid she became. She spread her placidity over everything. It lay, like
an invisible glue, upon everything in the Roundabout--you could feel it on
the door-handles, as you feel the jammy reminiscences of incautious
servant-maids. Peter felt it but did not know what it was that he had to
deal with.
He had determined, when the sharpest shock of Stephen's death had passed,
and he was able to think of other things, that the supremely important
thing for him now to do was to get back to his old relations with Clare.
There was, he grimly reflected, "Mortimer Stant" to be finished within a
month or two and he knew, perfectly well, with the assurance of past
experience that whilst Clare held the stage, Mortimer had the poorest of
chances--nevertheless Clare was, at this moment, the thing to struggle
for.
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