"Good!" exclaimed George, with a gaiety that was now forced, a bravado of gaiety.
He thought:
"The old chump evidently doesn't like me interfering. Silly old pompous ass!" Nevertheless his attitude towards the huffy landlord, if scornful, was good-humoured and indulgent.
Then he noticed that Mr. Haim held in his hand a half-sheet of note-paper which disturbingly seemed familiar. "
What is the meaning of this, Mr. Cannon?" Mr. Haim demanded, advancing towards the brightness of the lamp and extending the paper. He was excessively excited. Excitement always intensified his age.
The offered document was the letter which George had that morning received from Marguerite. The missive was short, a mere note, but its terms could leave no doubt as to the relations between the writer and the recipient. Moreover, it ended with a hieroglyphic sign, several times repeated, whose significance is notorious throughout the civilized world.
"Where did you get that?" muttered George, with a defensive menace half formed in his voice. He faltered. His mood had not yet become definitive.
Mr. Haim answered:
"I have just picked it up in the hall, sir. The wind must have blown it off the table in your room, and the door was left open. I presume that I have the right to read papers I find lying about in my own house."
George was dashed. On returning home from Mrs. John's lunch he had changed his suit for another one almost equally smart, but of Angora and therefore more comfortable. He liked to change. He had taken the letter out of a side-pocket of the jacket and put it with his watch, money, and other kit on the table while he changed, and he had placed everything back into the proper pockets, everything except the letter. Carelessness! A moment of negligence had brought about the irremediable. The lovely secret was violated. The whole of his future life and of Marguerite's future life seemed to have been undermined and contaminated by that single act of omission. Marguerite wrote seldom to him because of the risks. But precautions had been arranged for the occasions when she had need to write, and she possessed a small stock of envelopes addressed by himself, so that Mr. Haim might never by chance, picking up an envelope from the hall floor, see George's name in his daughter's hand. And now Mr. Haim had picked up an actual letter from the hall floor. And the fault for the disaster was George's own.