Rent Adela Cathcart, Volume II

Synopsis

Adelia Cathcart has an illness of the spirit -- perhaps an illness of the soul. No one -- not her father, her neighbors, not even the curate of her parish nor his doctor brother can scry the secret of her malady. But her uncle John -- not a blood relation, but a friend of her father's who goes by the name 'John Smith' -- has a notion. He notices that as the neighbors tell an anecdote to one another in her presence Adelia seems for a moment to come back to life. We should read her stories, he says. Beautiful, beautiful stories. Now they read the tale of 'The Broken Swords,' a story of two sisters and a brother who gaze for the last time on a great pale-golden star that followed the sun down the steep west. It went down to arise again; and the brother about to depart might return, but more than the usual doubt hung upon his future. For between the white dresses of the sisters, shone his scarlet coat and golden sword-knot, which he had put on for the first time, more to gratify their pride than his own vanity. The brightening moon, as if prophetic of a future memory, had already begun to dim the scarlet and the gold, and to give them a pale, ghostly hue. And slowly, slowly, Adelia begins to recover. . . .

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