The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice, melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband.
For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it had been--and here was the awful proof.
She gazed at her husband, as a wife ought to gaze at her husband in a crisis.

His thoughts were much vaguer than hers, his thoughts about money being always extremely vague.
"Suppose you went up to the City and saw Mr.What's-his-name ?" she suggested, meaning the signatory of the letter.
"_Me_!" It was a cry of the soul aghast, a cry drawn out of him sharply, by a most genuine cruel alarm.

Him to go up to the City to interview a solicitor! Why, the poor dear woman must be demented! He could not have done it for a million pounds.

The thought of it made him sick, raising the whole of his lunch to his throat, as by some sinister magic.
She saw and translated the look on his face.

It was a look of horror.
And at once she made excuses for him to herself.