"The great moment has come and gone," she read to Conquest. "I have seen Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything. It was harder than I expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard. I think I felt sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal. He not only takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride. I can see that that thought is uppermost. What he feels is not so much the fact that I deceived him as that I deceived him. I can understand it, too. In a country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been touched by it before. It has been a kind of boast that his men were always the genuine article. If one of them is called Smith, it is because he is a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding. But that isn't all. He took me into his family—into his very heart. He showed that, when I told him. He tried not to, but he couldn't help it. I tell you it hurt—me. I won't try to write about it. I'll tell you everything face to face, when I get up to the mark, if I ever do. Apparently my letters hadn't prepared him for the thing at all. He thought it was to be something to do with Evie, though he might have known I wouldn't have chucked up everything for that. The worst of it is, he's no good at seeing things all round. He can't take my point of view a bit. It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in, because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over his eyes—his eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before. I sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that there's something to be said on my side. He doesn't, and he never will—which only hurts me the more.
"As for Evie, he wouldn't let me mention her name. I didn't insist, because it was too painful—I mean, too painful to see how he took it. He said, in about ten words, that Evie had not been any more engaged than if she had given her word to a man of air, and that there was no reason why she should be spoken of. We left it there. I couldn't deny that, and it was no use saying any more. The only reply to him must be given by Evie herself. He is writing to her, and so am I. I wish you would help her to see that she must consider herself quite free, and that she isn't to undertake what she may not have the strength to carry out. I realize more and more that I was asking her to do the impossible."
It was an hour or two after reading this, when Conquest had gone away, that Evie herself—as dainty as spring, in flowered muslin and a Leghorn hat crowned with a wreath of roses—came fluttering in.
"I've had the queerest letter from Uncle Jarrott," she began, breathlessly. "The poor old dear—well, something must be the matter with him. I can't for the life of me imagine what Herbert can have told him, but he doesn't understand a bit."
Miriam locked her own letter in her desk, saying as she did so:
"How does he show it?—that he doesn't understand."
"Why, he simply talks wild—that's how he shows it. He says I am not to consider myself engaged to Herbert—that I was never engaged to him at all. I wonder what he calls it, if it isn't engaged, when I have a ring—and everything."
"It is rather mystifying." Miriam tried to smile. "I suppose he means that having given your word to Herbert Strange, you're not to consider yourself bound to Norrie Ford, unless you want to."
"Pff! I don't care anything about that. I never liked the name of Herbert—or Strange, either. I told you that before. All the same, I wish Uncle Jarrott would have a little sense."