“Pray let us thoroughly understand each other,” I said at length. “You, on your side, have resolved to place complete reliance on the statement of an exposed adventuress, without one word of corroboration, and to refuse the clear proof of my innocence, which I undertake to give you.” I waited for a moment, but she maintained an altogether obstinate silence. “Very well,” I resumed, “that is understood so far. You conceive it your duty to separate Violet and myself, and to attempt to widen any possible separation between us by suppressing my letters to her and hers to me. You must permit me to point out to you that you are adopting a very dangerous course, and I must warn you that I shall do my best to frustrate a design which seems to me so ureasonable and so cruel that I should never have thought you capable of forming it.”
“You will do your best, of course,” she answered, “and I shall do mine. I wish you good-morning, Captain Fyffe.”
What with perplexity, and what with grief and anger, I scarce knew what to do, but I turned to her with a final appeal.
“I am sure,” I said, “that you have your niece's interests at heart. It is not so very long since you professed to be my friend. Ever since I have known you I have had to tell you that you very much overestimated a chance service I have rendered to your son.”
“I have been waiting for that,” she answered. “That is just the sort of appeal I was expecting you to make. It is of no use for us to discuss this question any longer, for let me tell you I have seen your letters.”
“The letters!” I cried.
“The letters,” she repeated—“the letters to Miss Constance Pleyel.”
“Great Heaven, madam!” I cried, exasperated beyond patience, “I have never denied that I wrote to Miss Constance Pleyel, but the letters were written when I was a boy, and they are as absolutely harmless and blameless as any love-sick nonsense ever written in the world!”
“I have seen the letters,” she repeated, “and I have seen Miss Pleyel, and, once more, Captain Fyffe, and for the last time, I have made up my mind.”
With that she laid her hand upon the bell-pull, and sounded a peal at the bell which was so rapidly answered that I more than half suspected, and, indeed, do now more than half suspect, that the man who responded to it had been listening.