The lady rose with a lazy, languid grace, walked to the door and called still lazily, “O Pedro!”
The solitary rower clambered up the rocks and appeared on the cottage threshold.
“Is this the lady who gave you the letters for me and to whom you took mine?”
“Si, senora.”
“They were addressed to a Mr. Kirby,” said Mrs. Bunker sullenly. “How was I to know they were for Mrs. Kirby?”
“Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby, and myself are all the same. You don't suppose the cunnle would give my real name and address? Did you address yo'r packet to HIS real name or to some one else. Did you let your husband know who they were for?”
Oddly, a sickening sense of the meanness of all these deceits and subterfuges suddenly came over Mrs. Bunker. Without replying she went to her bedroom and returned with Colonel Marion's last letter, which she tossed into her visitor's lap.
“Thank yo', Mrs. Bunker. I'll be sure to tell the cunnle how careful yo' were not to give up his correspondence to everybody. It'll please him mo' than to hear yo' are wearing his ring—which everybody knows—before people.”
“He gave it to me—he—he knew I wouldn't take money,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly.
“He didn't have any to give,” said the lady slowly, as she removed the envelope from her letter and looked up with a dazzling but cruel smile. “A So'th'n gentleman don't fill up his pockets when he goes out to fight. He don't tuck his maw's Bible in his breast-pocket, clap his dear auntie's locket big as a cheese plate over his heart, nor let his sole leather cigyar case that his gyrl gave him lie round him in spots when he goes out to take another gentleman's fire. He leaves that to Yanks!”