People seem to have gone mad.

Even I have been astonished." "I had no idea," I said.
"Of course not, of course not--no one had.

But, unless I am much mistaken--_much_--there will have to be an enquiry, and people will be very lucky who have had nothing to do with it ..." I gathered that things were in a bad way, over there as over here; that there were scandals and a tremendous outcry for purification in the highest places.

I saw the man get into his fiacre and took my way back across the court-yard rather slowly, pondering over the part I was to fill in the emigration, wondering how far events had conferred on me a partnership in the family affairs.
I found that my tacitly acknowledged function was that of supervising nurse-tender, the sort of thing that made for personal tenderness in the aridity of profuse hired help.

I was expected to arrange a rug just a _little_ more comfortably than the lady's maid who would travel in the compartment--to give the finishing touches.
It was astonishing how well the thing was engineered; the removal, I mean.