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Rh filmy and pathetic, and using her soft blue eyes most patently. Two days in succession, also, she took Ernesto off for a ramble in the woods, prolonged beyond the tea-hour. And this procedure came near to undoing her. As Ernesto warmed toward her, Nina cooled. The balance swung the other way, and now it was Nina who declared that they could not keep Edith on.

Then came the day when Nina braced herself to the ordeal of telling Edith that she must go to England. The unfortunate result was a fit of hysterics so violent that the French doctor had to be called in; and he, after a long interview, pronounced that Madame was on the verge of nervous prostration and must be kept perfectly quiet, with, above all, no mental disturbance. In despair, Nina wrote off to Egisto the state of the case and told him that he must come himself and take his wife away. Then there was a period of exhausted quiet. Edith, having gained her point—to stay where she was till an interview with her husband could be brought about—allowed her nervous crisis to be calmed. And Teresa, to whom she had begun to talk freely, good-naturedly gave her a hint as to Ernesto. "If you want anything from, my sister, that isn't the way to get it," she explained. "It's Nina who decides things here, and to have Ernesto on your side will do more harm than good with her."