“Adela Sellon.”
“Oh, good Lord, I’ve done it now!” he cried again, the horrible truth dawning upon him that he had not only opened and read another man’s letter, but had surprised another man’s secret, and that a secret of a peculiarly awkward nature. How he anathematised his carelessness. He snatched up the envelope, which he had thrown down among the others. There was the address—plain as a pikestaff. Yet, stay, not so very plain after all. It was directed “M. Sellon, Esq.” But the long letters were dwarfed and the short extended. The “M” at a casual glance looked not unlike “Ch,” a common abbreviation on envelopes of Selwood’s longish Christian name. Then like lightning, his memory sped back to the day of his guest’s arrival and his own joke relative to each of them holding half their names in common. “We are both ‘Sells,’” he had said with a laugh, and now into what a cursed mistake had that coincidence led him.
Poor Chris groaned aloud as he thought of the awkward position in which his carelessness had placed him. It would have been bad enough had the letter been of an ordinary nature. But being such as it was, the probabilities that its real owner would believe in accident having anything to do with the matter were infinitesimal. No. He would certainly suspect him of a deliberate intention to pry into his affairs. And what made things worse was the fact of the other man being his guest.
But only momentarily did this idea serve to divert his thoughts from the extreme awkwardness of his own position. Violet Avory was his guest, too; and with far greater claim on his consideration than this stranger—for was she not under his care? And as the full force of the disclosure with which he had so involuntarily become acquainted—and its consequences—struck home to his mind, honest Chris felt fired with hot anger against the absent Sellon. What business had the latter—a married man—laying himself out to win poor Violet’s heart? That he had succeeded—and thoroughly succeeded—had been only too obvious to every member of the Sunningdale household—and that for some time past. No, no. Sellon had abused his hospitality in a shameful manner, and in so doing had almost forfeited any claim to consideration. Had he learned the ugly secret in the ordinary way Christopher would not have hesitated for a moment. He would have forbidden Sellon the house in terms which should leave no sort of margin for dispute. But then—the manner of his information. There lay the rub. Never in the whole course of his life had Christopher Selwood found himself in so difficult—so perplexing a situation.
Then he did the very worst thing he could have done. He resolved to take his wife into confidence in the matter at once. Bundling the whole heap of correspondence into his pocket again, he rose, and took his way to the sheep-kraals for the evening count-in. But it is to be feared that if Gomfana or old Jacob had carelessly left a sheep or two in the veldt that evening pro bono the jackals, their master was too uncertain in his count to be sure of it.
Mrs Selwood’s indignation at the disclosure was as great as that of her husband, but the method by which that disclosure had come about, womanlike, she dismissed as a comparative trifle. Indeed, had she been the one to open the letter, it is pretty safe to assert that so far from resting content with the fragment which Christopher had found more than enough, she would have read it through to the bitter end. For to the feminine mind the axiom that “the end justifies the means” is a thoroughly sound one. Not one woman in fifty can resist the temptation of reading a letter which she is not meant to read when it is safe to do so, and not one in ten thousand if she suspects any particular reason why she should be left in ignorance of its contents.
“Well, now, Hilda, what’s to be done?” said Selwood, when he had told her—for with scrupulous honour he had refused to let her see one word of the letter itself. It was only intended for one person’s eyes. It was horribly unfortunate that two had seen it, but it would be worse still to extend the privilege to a third.
“What’s to be done?” she echoed. “It’s a shocking business, and the man must be an arrant scoundrel. The only thing to be done is, in the first place, to request him not to return here; in the next, to sound Violet herself. Things may not have gone so far as we think, but I’m very much afraid they have. Why, latterly the girl has become quite changed, and for a week or so before he left she could hardly bear him out of her sight.”
“Yes, that’ll be the best plan, I suppose,” acquiesced Chris, ruefully.
“I hope Violet will show a proper amount of sense and self-respect,” concluded Mrs Selwood, in a tone which seemed to convey that the hope was but a forlorn one. “But remember, Chris, we must take up a firm position and stand to it. The girl is very young, and we are responsible for her until she returns home, and indeed I begin to think the sooner she does that the better, now. She is very young, as I said, but she has turned one and twenty, and there’s no knowing what mad suicidal act of folly a girl of her temperament, and legally her own mistress, may be capable of under these circumstances.”