CHAPTER XXIV
VIRGINIA GOES TO KENCOTE
"My dear Lady George Dubec" [wrote Mrs. Clinton], "My husband and I will be glad if you will come to us here when you return to Meadshire, which Dick tells me will be next Wednesday. We shall be pleased to welcome you at Kencote and to make your acquaintance. We shall be pleased also to see Miss Dexter, and perhaps you will kindly tell her so, and let me know if she will accompany you.
"With kindest regards to yourself and to her,
"Believe me,
"Very sincerely yours,
"NINA CLINTON."
"There!" said Virginia, tossing this missive over to her companion. She had opened Dick's much longer letter, which had come by the same post, first of all, and half-way through its perusal had searched for Mrs. Clinton's amongst the rest. Now she returned to Dick's, while Miss Dexter read Mrs. Clinton's.
"What on earth does it all mean?" asked Miss Dexter. "Has the world come to an end, or has that preposterous old bear come to his senses at last?"
"It means, my dear Toby," said Virginia, looking up at her with a happy smile, "that all this horrible business is at an end. Dick has fought, and Dick has won. And we owe everything to the help that his dearest of dear mothers has given us. I knew I should love that woman from the first time I set eyes on her, and now I adore her. Three cheers for Mrs. Clinton."
She waved Dick's letter over her head. Miss Dexter looked down again at Mrs. Clinton's, and then again in dry surprise at her friend. "And do you really mean to tell me," she asked, "that you are satisfied with this as an atonement for everything they have made you go through? I never read such a letter—as cold and unwilling as she is herself. I'll tell you what will happen, Virginia, if you go to Kencote. You will simply be insulted. Do you think people like that can change? Not a bit of it. 'Kindest regards,' indeed! She may keep her kindest regards to herself as far as I'm concerned."