“But you don’t have to understand,”
she pleaded.
“You mean—?” he asked.
“I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow.”
“Nonsense!” And he was conscious, with
vexation, that he had undeniably flushed.
“I mean, then, I am a woman, and I understand.
Everything is as near what it should be as is possible
while Patricia is seeing so much of—we
will call it the artistic temperament.”
Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. “But if I went
on in that line you would believe I was jealous.
And heaven knows I am not the least bit so—with
the unavoidable qualification that, being a woman,
I can’t help rising superior to common-sense.”
He said, “You mean Jack Charteris—?
But what on earth has he to do with these letters?”
“I don’t mean any proper names at all.
I simply mean you are not to undo my work. It
would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and
giving up all this”—she waved her
hand lightly toward the lawns of Matocton,—“and
it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you
haven’t any money of your own, Rudolph.
Ah, Rudolph, we can’t give you up! We need
you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty
little stories, and keep us amused. So please
be sensible, Rudolph.”
“Permit me to point out I firmly believe that
silence is the perfectest herald of joy,” observed
Colonel Musgrave. “Only I do not
understand why you should have dragged John Charteris’s
name into this ludicrous affair——”
“You really do not understand——?”
But Colonel Musgrave’s handsome face declared
very plainly that he did not.
“Well,” Mrs. Pendomer reflected, “I
dare say it is best, upon the whole, you shouldn’t.
And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the
Ullwethers’ to-day, and I shan’t ever be
invited to Matocton again, and I must tell my maid
to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break
her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings
are tediously alike. But, allowing ample time
for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of her
unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five.
I have noticed that one usually does—somehow,”
said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed to smack of allegories.
And yet it may have been because she knew—as
who knew better?—something of that mischief’s
nature which was now afoot.
The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon.
Indeed, the episode set him to ransacking the desk
in which Patricia had found them—a desk
which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous
correspondence of the colonel’s father dating
back a half-century and more. Much curious matter
the colonel discovered there, for “Wild Will”
Musgrave’s had been a full-blooded career.
And over one packet of letters, in particular, the
colonel sat for a long while with an unwontedly troubled
face.
