Amethyst knew that her letter was abrupt and outspoken, but in the effort to leave no doubt behind, she could do the ungracious and cruel thing in no softer fashion.
She gave the letter to Una, with strict injunctions to say nothing about it, but to take care that it was sent at once. Then she threw herself down on the bed, and, when Una came back again, she found her dead asleep, her face white and still, her limbs relaxed, in the reaction from the intense strain which she had been enduring. While she slept, Lady Haredale got herself up in a marvellously charming toilette, and drove off to her great garden-party with Kattern, full of the unexpected pleasure, and Tory, looking unwontedly serious. Miss Haredale and Carrie were shut up in their own rooms.
Una had been called down-stairs by her mother before she started, to receive orders to take care that Amethyst saw Sir Richard—orders which Una may be forgiven for receiving in silence.
She sat down in the drawing-room to collect her senses a little, and to wonder what would happen next, when there was a step behind her, and she turned and saw her brother. He came slowly down the long room towards her, looking pale and ill, and with that look of being down on his luck, which, though he was perfectly well-dressed, gave him the air of being out at elbows.
“The fellows said you were alone, Una, so, as you’re a kind little girl, I came to speak to you. It’s all up now, and I want you to tell Carrie so.”
“But, Charles—had you—is it because of what happened at Epsom?”
“Well, no, my dear, not exactly. But there are plenty of other things for Clyste to rout up, you see. I never was so clear from—difficulties—as I gave Grattan and his lordship to understand. No fellow ever can go to the bottom of his affairs, you see. I always knew that whitewashing me couldn’t be done. There’s not money enough, and I haven’t impudence enough, Una, to carry it out. So I’m going to make myself scarce again.”
“But, Charles—what shall you do?”
“Oh, well, there are ways and means of which you don’t know anything, and I know myself down among them; I was a fool to try this business. But I liked Carrie’s little round face, and if I’d been a better fellow, or if being a bad fellow was the sort of thing she thinks it is, I might have tried. But you ought to know a little more about it than she does, Una.”
“Yes, I never did see how you could marry her.”