The signature of the letter was—
"Yours,
"RICHARD WYNN."
Now, who in the world might he be? Richard Wynn? Wynn?
Ah! Suddenly I realized why the surname at least was familiar. Mr. Wynn! Of course! I placed him, now. I did remember. Sitting there, wan, on this the most miserable morning of my life, my thoughts were switched back just seven years.
Seven mortal years ago! A gap between a disillusioned young woman of twenty-two and a gawky eager child of fifteen, as I then was.
That had been in the days when we lived on the borders of Wales. My father had farmed, in a scrambling sort of way, the small estate that he owned there, and as he had to make ends meet somehow, he had taken in a trio of hobbledehoys as farm pupils—what they'd learnt from dear old Dad's antiquated methods goodness only knows.
Mr. Wynn was the eldest of these pupils. I don't think I'd ever taken as much interest in him as I had in the fox terrier puppy that he gave me just before he sailed for the ranch of an uncle in Canada. But I had hated his going away. I always did hate partings, even from the succession of mountain-bred cooks who stayed their six months with us. On that gloomy autumn morning, with the mountains blotted out by mist and the rain coming down in a steady drip-drip-drip on the slate roof, when we had all gathered in the veranda to say good-bye to the departing pupil I had suddenly felt like bursting into tears.
Mr. Wynn, the leggy, dark-haired Welsh lad of nineteen, had turned with his brand-new suit-case all ready labelled in his hand, had seen my blank look, had stared down upon me and had clutched me by the pig-tail as I turned to flee.
"Nice kid, ripping kid," he'd muttered in a brusque, touched young voice. "Give us a kiss for good-bye, Joan."
And he'd drawn my head back by its plait and kissed me under the eyes of my amused family. They had ragged me about it for months. How should I, at that age, have guessed the difference between that and a real kiss? Years later Harry had slipped the real kisses into my life, in the course of conversation, so to speak, and by imperceptible degrees, which was Harry's insidious way of making love—none the less fatal!