MY DEAR LILY,—I do not know how to express myself. You have known always the great difficulties of my position opposite to my mother. She has found that I owe to marry myself, and I have demanded the hand of Mademoiselle Arpenteur-Legage. I dare not ask your pardon, but I have written to make an arrangement for you, and from now please use the apartment which has for me memories the most sacred. It is useless to fight against circumstances.
HECTOR.
“I think he might have used mourning paper,” Sylvia said. “They always have plenty at health resorts.”
“Don’t be so unkind, Sylvia,” Lily cried. “How can you be so unkind, when you see that my heart is broken?” She burst into tears.
In a moment Sylvia was on her knees beside her.
“Lily, my dearest Lily, you did not really love him? Oh no, my dear, not really. If you really loved him, I’ll go now to Aix myself and arrange matters over the head of his stuffy old mother. But you didn’t really love him. You’re simply upset at the breaking of a habit. Oh, my dear, you couldn’t really have loved him!”
“He sha’n’t marry this girl,” Lily declared, standing up in a rage. “I’ll go to Aix-les-Bains myself and I’ll see this Mademoiselle.” She snatched the letter from the floor to read the odious name of her rival. “I’ll send her all his letters. You mightn’t want to read them, but she’ll want to read them. She’ll read every word. She’ll read how, when he was thinking of proposing to her, he was calling me his angel, his life, his soul, how he was—Oh, she’ll read every word, and I’ll send them to her by registered post, and then I’ll know she gets them. How dare a Frenchman treat an English girl like that? How dare he? How dare he? French people think English girls have no passion. They think we’re cold. Are we cold? We may not like being kissed all the time like French girls, but we’re not cold. Oh, I feel I could kill him!”
Sylvia interrupted her rage.
“My dear, if all this fire and fury is because you’re disappointed at not being married, twist him for fifty thousand francs, buy a silver casket, put his letters inside, and send them to him for a wedding-present with your good wishes. But if you love him, darling Lily, let me go and tell him the truth; if I think he’s not worth it, then come away with me and be lonely with me somewhere. My beautiful thing, I can’t promise you a coral island, but you shall have all my heart if you will.”
“Love him?” echoed Lily. “I hate him. I despise him after this, but why should he marry her?”