Fulvia leant back, and shut her eyes.
"I can't yet. I have to finish my letter—and I want a little peace. Go and dress for dinner first—both of you."
"And then—" Daisy said.
"Yes, then perhaps. I'll see. Only go now, and don't say a word to worry madre."
The girls took her at her word, retiring softly, and Fulvia found herself alone; safe for a while, she knew, since neither Anice nor Daisy could ever dress in less than half-an-hour, the one from innate slowness, the other from lack of method.
Fulvia's hands beating! She could have told Daisy that she was beating all over; the clang of a hard pulsation echoing through every nerve and fibre of her body. "Am I going to be ill? I feel like it," she asked of herself; and then aloud, with a laugh—"Nonsense! There are nerves enough in the family already. I'll not sport them!"
Then she glanced through Mr. Carden-Cox's chit-chat sheet, only to find nothing in it worth attention, and read her own postscript. Thereupon came again the thrill of joy, followed by shame.
"What would Nigel think? How could I? Tell him!—Oh, I can never confess! He must never know! To read it—all the time knowing it was not meant for me. I! Why I have always prided myself on never stooping to anything mean—and now, this! What could have come over me that moment? I must have been demented. How I could! Yes, it was temptation of course—but why did I give way?"
Yet she drew the half-sheet from her pocket, and her eyes fell upon it anew. "No harm now! I have read the whole—I can't help having read it," she murmured. Then, with a renewed rush of self-contempt, she caught her glance away, crumpled up the piece of paper, and actually flung it upon the fire. At the last instant she recoiled, and as the little crushed ball of paper fell upon a surface of unburnt black coal, her fingers snatched it off. Impossible yet to destroy those words, so full of light and hope for her. She would not read them again, but she would keep them; just for a few days.
Fulvia crossed the room with trembling steps, smoothing the crumpled half-sheet as she went. She unlocked her dressing-box, slipped the paper behind the little looking-glass which had its nest within the lid, and re-locked the box.