"It would not be extraordinary in the least," he repeated, "if the professor had gone mad.

That was not the extraordinary circumstance to which I referred." "What," I asked, stamping my foot, "was the extraordinary thing ?" "The extraordinary thing," said Basil, ringing the bell, "is that he has not gone mad from excitement." The tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the doorway as the door opened.

Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlour.

There was a general sense of their keeping something from view.

They seemed like three black-clad ladies in some strange play of Maeterlinck, veiling the catastrophe from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.
"Sit down, won't you ?" said one of them, in a voice that was somewhat rigid with pain.