What really had happened to Uncle Arnold was a bad cold from going out in his slippers without a hat. But Aunt Ellen was enjoying herself too much for accuracy. She was in the raptures of a grand improvisation. Presently her fancy soared; she indulged in Gothic similes.
"It was like a witches' sabbath. And poor Edward! Not a word has he said in blame of you. He lies there as patient as a martyr. And then I suppose you'll go off this afternoon and confess to your priest down in Bog Lane, and come back under the impression that you're as white as driven snow. To me such a pretence of religion is disgusting."
"Perhaps you don't realize, Aunt Ellen," said Jasmine, "that Edward has been making love to me for weeks, and that I've had to laugh at him to prevent his doing something silly."
"What do you mean, doing something silly, you wicked and vulgar girl? I cannot think where you got such a mind. A servant would not get such disgusting ideas into her head. I suppose we must put it down to your mother."
"Stop!" said Jasmine, white with anger. "Stop, will you? Or I shall throw this inkpot at you." And when Aunt Ellen did stop, she was half sorry, because she was hating her so much that she was really wanting to throw the inkpot at her. However, she put it back on the table, rushed from her aunt's presence up to her own room, where, after weeping for an hour, she sat down and wrote to Harry Vibart.
_I hope you realize by now that you acted abominably in coming down here after what I said in my letter. I never want to see you again. Please understand that I mean it this time. However, I'm going back to Italy almost at once where people know how to behave themselves. I hate England. I've been miserable here, and you've made me more miserable than anybody._
Then she signed herself _Jasmine Grant_ and fiercely blotted him out of her life.
After the scene with her aunt, Jasmine longed to leave the Deanery at once, for she suffered torments of humiliation in having to stay on there in a disgrace that was being published all over Silchester. The Dean himself was kind, and perhaps it was because he understood the difficulty of her position that he asked her to come and work with him. But such an easy way out for Jasmine did not please his wife, who was continually coming up to the study and worrying him with her fears about the progress of Edward's fracture in order to impress both him and Jasmine with their heartless conduct in thus working away regardless of the martyr downstairs. The Dean was a kind-hearted man, but he considered his work on pre-Norman Britain the most important thing in life; finding it impossible to proceed under the stress of these continual interruptions, he presently announced that he must go to Oxford for a week or two and do some work in the Bodleian.