So it is.
MRS. CLANDON } (all four { I---
GLORIA } speaking { My---
McCOMAS } simul- { Mrs.---
VALENTINE } taneously). { You---
BOHUN (drowning them in two thunderous words). One moment. (Dead
silence.) Pray allow me. Sit down everybody. (They obey humbly.
Gloria takes the saddle-bag chair on the hearth. Valentine slips around
to her side of the room and sits on the ottoman facing the window, so
that he can look at her. Crampton sits on the ottoman with his back to
Valentine's. Mrs. Clandon, who has all along kept at the opposite side
of the room in order to avoid Crampton as much as possible, sits near
the door, with McComas beside her on her left. Bohun places himself
magisterially in the centre of the group, near the corner of the table
on Mrs. Clandon's side. When they are settled, he fixes Crampton with
his eye, and begins.) In this family, it appears, the husband's name is
Crampton: the wife's Clandon. Thus we have on the very threshold of the
case an element of confusion.
VALENTINE (getting up and speaking across to him with one knee on the
ottoman). But it's perfectly simple.
BOHUN (annihilating him with a vocal thunderbolt). It is. Mrs.
Clandon has adopted another name. That is the obvious explanation which
you feared I could not find out for myself.
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