It's absurd to say she caught it with us."
If he had not been sincerely sorry for them he would have been annoyed.
"Pepper tells me," he continued, "that he left the house because he
thought them so careless. He says they never washed their vegetables
properly. Poor people! It's a fearful price to pay. But it's only what
I've seen over and over again--people seem to forget that these things
happen, and then they do happen, and they're surprised."
Mrs. Thornbury agreed with him that they had been very careless, and
that there was no reason whatever to think that she had caught the fever
on the expedition; and after talking about other things for a short
time, she left him and went sadly along the passage to her own room.
There must be some reason why such things happen, she thought to
herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to
understand what it was. It seemed so strange--so unbelievable. Why, only
three weeks ago--only a fortnight ago, she had seen Rachel; when she
shut her eyes she could almost see her now, the quiet, shy girl who was
going to be married. She thought of all that she would have missed
had she died at Rachel's age, the children, the married life, the
unimaginable depths and miracles that seemed to her, as she looked back,
to have lain about her, day after day, and year after year. The stunned
feeling, which had been making it difficult for her to think, gradually
gave way to a feeling of the opposite nature; she thought very quickly
and very clearly, and, looking back over all her experiences, tried to
fit them into a kind of order.
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