She laughed, and he went away feeling that he could gladly have throttled Jenny, could he but succeed in getting her in some other body than that belonging to his betrothed. If he was irritated by this experience, however, he had one to meet later which tried him still more. Abby, on letting him into the house on Tuesday, once more led him mysteriously into the reception-room.
“Miss Alice’s been writing to herself, sir.”
She held toward him a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to Alice. He took it half mechanically, and as he wondered how he was to circumvent this new trick of the maliciously ingenious Jenny, he noted that the handwriting was strangely different from Alice’s usual style.
“Did she give you this to post?” he asked.
“It was with the other letters, and I noticed it and did n’t mail it.”
“I’ll take it,” he said. “You did perfectly right.”
He wondered whether the prescience of Jenny would enable her to discover that he had destroyed her note to Alice; then he smiled to realize how he was coming to think of her as almost a supernatural demon, and reflected that nothing could be easier than for her to leave a paper where Alice must find it. A couple of days later he found his thought verified when Alice said to him:—
“George, who is Jenny?”
As she spoke, she put into his hand an unsigned note which said only, “George loves Jenny.” The instant which was necessarily taken for its examination gave him a chance to steady himself.