When he had been at Ralston Old Manor four weeks and two days there was a letter for me from him in my morning post at the Abbey. "I want you to come along as soon as you can and break something to Mrs. Murray," he wrote. "I think she would rather hear it from you than me."
I hardly waited to finish breakfast; but I was more excited than frightened. If the news had been bad, I thought that Sir Beverley was the man to have told it straight out. If it were good, he wouldn't mind tantalizing me a little.
Sir Beverley was walking under the elms, his hands behind his back, taking his early stroll, when my car drove up. I got out at once and joined him.
"The man's going to get well—well, I tell you!" he joyously announced. "No dreary semi-invalid for a devoted wife to take care of, but a man in the prime of life, for a woman to adore. I'm sure of it."
"But how wonderful!" I cried, ecstatically squeezing his arm. "What a triumph, after dozens of great doctors had given him up! Does he know yet?"
Sir Beverley shook his head. "I'm going to tell him this morning. I wanted to wait till Mrs. Murray had been told."
"Why on earth didn't you tell her yourself—tell them both together?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I only thought she'd rather get the good news from an intimate friend like you. If it makes her break down a bit she won't mind before you as she would before me, and it wouldn't be wise to surprise her in front of the invalid. When Murray hears from my lips, and Mrs. Murray from yours, there won't have to be any preliminaries: they can just fall into each other's arms."
I argued no further. Indeed, there was no need. I knew as well as if he'd had the embarrassment of putting it into words, how Sir Beverley had feared that Rosemary might disappoint her husband, if the great news were told in his presence. I thought also that if she were "strange" in the way she had been strange before, he didn't want to see her being it!
All my lurking suspicions of Rosemary had died an ignominious death at the moment when, radiant with the light of her own devotion, she had tried to define the love she felt. I was sure that what Sir Beverley had mistaken for "horror" was only an effort at self-control when—perhaps rather suddenly—he had given his first hint of hope. But I didn't insist to Sir Beverley. Rosemary would soon prove to him that I was right.