"Oh, my goodness!" cried Adela. "What! am I at all—at all—in the remotest degree—like that creature we have got rid of?"
The negative was not decisively enunciated or immediate; that is, it did not come with the vehemence and volume that could alone have satisfied Adela's expectation.
The "We are all of one family" was an offensive truism, of which Adela might justly complain.
That night the ladies received their orders from Wilfrid—they were to express no alarm before their father as to the state of his health, or to treat him ostensibly as an invalid; they were to marvel publicly at Mrs. Chump's continued absence, and a letter requesting her to return was to be written. At the sign of an expostulation, Wilfrid smote them down by saying that the old man's life hung on a thread, and it was for them to cut it or not.