The letter touched me, and I am an impulsive person. I sent a telegram and followed it.
Cynthia met me at the station, driving a fat pony in a governess cart, and very much inclined to cry when she saw me. I met my grandfather, who was very vague and grey and shrunk and sad. We became friends at once. I met Rose, the woman who had nursed Cynthia, and Rose said that I had supplanted her and she would call me out. She was quite charming. Many people were staying at the house, amongst others I met——
Let me get it over quickly, for the one thing that I will not tell is my love-story. It was very brief and tempestuous. In a few months I was playing with the lone hand no longer. I, with all my independence and all my common sense, fell hopelessly in love, and acknowledged in white satin, Honiton lace and orange blossom that I was a woman after all. Well, one might be worse things. One of the most expensive of my wedding presents came from Mr. James. The 36 h.-p. Pegasus car is of importance. I taught my husband to drive it.
POSTSCRIPT
I have been looking at these pages over again. I wrote them at the time when the things happened, and that is years ago; yet they all seem but yesterday. It seems but yesterday that Minnie Saxe brought to me, in the days of my extreme poverty and hunger, six kippers, fat and well-liking. It seems but yesterday that I stepped out on the platform at Charing Cross station and drove from there with the man whom I had never met in my life in order that I might personate a dead woman. And now?
And now, right away in the country, it is all very quiet but for the voices of two small children overhead. Even as I write this I am interrupted by a grave man of imperturbable mien—a man who may possibly have seen a joke in the servants’ hall, but has never permitted himself to see one outside of it. He announces, with the utmost solemnity, “Master Bernard desired me to say, m’lady, that the head of the toy duck has come off, and he would be glad if your ladyship would step upstairs and see about it.”
“Thanks, Jenkins,” I said. “Tell him I’m coming.”
THE END
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH