“Because you are too good and innocent,” said Uncle Philip. “There, don't you be down-hearted. I'll soon bring you two together again—a couple of ninnies. I'll tell you what is the first thing: you must come and live with me. Come at once, bag and baggage. He won't show here, the sulky brute.”
Philip Staines had a large house in Cavendish Square, a crusty old patient, like himself, had left him. It was his humor to live in a corner of this mansion, though the whole was capitally furnished by his judicious purchases at auctions.
He gave Rosa and her boy and his nurse the entire first floor, and told her she was there for life. “Look here,” said he, “this last affair has opened my eyes. Such women as you are the sweeteners of existence. You leave my roof no more. Your husband will make the same discovery. Let him run about, and be miserable a bit. He will have to come to book.”
She shook her head sadly.
“My Christopher will never say a harsh word to me. All the worse for me. He will quietly abandon a creature so inferior to him.”
“Stuff!”
Now, she was always running to the window, in hope that Christopher would call on his uncle, and that she might see him; and one day she gave a scream so eloquent, Philip knew what it meant. “Get you behind that screen, you and your boy,” said he, “and be as still as mice. Stop! give me that letter the scoundrel forged, and the ring.”
This was hardly done, and Rosa out of sight, and trembling from head to foot, when Christopher was announced. Philip received him very affectionately, but wasted no time.
“Been to Kent Villa yet?”
“No,” was the grim reply.