“Wait, wait,” cried the other. “Better read it this time—or, at any rate, as much of it as it was my misfortune to see.”
“H’m! Well, here goes,” said Maurice, jerking the letter out of the envelope as though it would burn his fingers, “Quite so,” he went on, with a bitter sneer, running his eye down the sheet. “That’s about enough of this highly entertaining document, the rest can be taken as read, like a petition to the House of Commons. That match, if you please. Thanks. I need hardly remind you, Selwood,” he went on, watching the flaming sheet curling up in the grate, “I need hardly remind you how many men there are in this world who marry the wrong woman. I dare say I needn’t remind you either that a considerable percentage of these are entrapped and defrauded into the concern by lies and deception, against which it is next to impossible for any man to guard—at all events any young man. When to this I add that there are women in this world who for sheer, gratuitous, uniform fiendishness of disposition could give the devil points and beat him at an easy canter. I think I’ve said about enough for all present purposes.”
“This is an awkward and most unpleasant business,” said Selwood. “Excuse me if I feel bound to refer once more to that letter. The—er—writer makes reference by name to Miss Avory, who is a guest in my house, and a relation of my wife’s—and that, too, in a very extraordinary manner, to put it as mildly as I can.”
“My dear fellow, that’s a little way of hers. I can assure you I am most awfully put out that you should have been annoyed about the business. As to the mistake, don’t give it another thought.”
“How did Mrs—er—the writer—know Miss Avory was here?”
This was a facer—not so much the question as the fact that the knowledge of Violet’s whereabouts on the part of the writer implied that he, Sellon, had not met her there at Sunningdale for the first time. But he hoped the other might not notice this side of it.
“That’s beyond me,” he answered. “How did she know I was here? For I need hardly tell you we don’t correspond every mail exactly. I can only explain it on the score that more people know Tom Fool than T.F. knows; that there are, I suppose, people in this neighbourhood who hail from the old country, or have relations there, and the postage upon gossip is no higher than that upon business.”
“You will not mind my saying that it is a pity we did not know you were a married man.”
“‘Had been,’ you should have said, not ‘were.’ Not but what legally I am still tied up fast enough—chained and bound—which has this advantage, that it keeps a man from all temptation to make a fool of himself a second time in his life. Still, it doesn’t count otherwise.”
“No, I suppose not,” said the other, significantly. “Perhaps it doesn’t keep a man from making a fool of other people, though.”