But such was not the case. Beneath the smooth-fitting piece of wood, which had sprung loose and been the means of driving a splinter under Viola's nail, thus apprising her of the fact that there was something in the drawer she had not seen, had been found some letters. And Viola had not told her aunt about them.
“I want to see what they are myself, first,” the girl decided.
Now they were spread out on her dressing table in front of her. She sat with her glorious blue-black hair unbound, and falling over her shoulders, which gleamed pink through the filmy thinness of her robe.
“I wonder if I shall be shocked when I read them?” she mused.
That was what Viola had been living in continual fear of since her father's death—that some disclosure would shock her—that she might come upon some phase of his past life which would not bear the full light of day. For Horace Carwell had not stinted himself of the pleasures of life as he saw them. He had eaten and drunk and he had made merry. And he was a gregarious man—one who did not like to take his pleasures alone.
And so Viola was afraid.
The letters were held together with an elastic band, and this gave some hope.
“If they were from a woman, he wouldn't have used a rubber band on them,” reasoned Viola. “He was too sentimental for that. They can't be mother's letters—they were in another compartment. I wonder—”
Viola had done much wondering since her mother's death, and considerable of it had been due to the life her father led. That he would marry again she doubted, but he was fond of the society of the men, and particularly the women of their own set, and some sets with which Viola preferred to have nothing to do.
And if Mr. Carwell had no intentions of marrying again, then his interest in women—