He went back, hoping against hope that he might find her there. She was not there, nor did she come. Why should she? In the middle of the afternoon came a letter; it had no beginning. It said:
I had a stiff and stifling interview with my aunt—the one Charles came to life under the knees of in the cart. She was as horrid as any one could possibly be. She reproached me for marrying a pauper, and said I'd better have stuck to the piano-tuner unless you were he in disguise! I was as dumb as a mule—indeed, I almost felt my ears beginning to lie back, as mules' ears do when they've decided they aren't going to, whatever it is. Presently I got it out of her that Aunt Alice's attack is very serious. If she gets over it she's to go to Switzerland; there's an old school friend out there that she loves, and who wants frightfully to have her there. So then I shall be able to come back, and we'll go out together again and see the world. You won't worry about me, will you? Because this house is quite the lap of. And you know that I wouldn't have broken off our mock-wedding tour for anything in the world except for her—because . . . but you know all that. Give my love to Charles.
"Yours sincerely" was crossed out, and a postscript added:
I don't know how to end this letter. I won't end it. I'll just put something at the end to show that this isn't the end—of our times together, I mean.
(To be continued.)
He thought it the prettiest, wittiest ending in the world.
His room was neat as a new pin, as Mrs. Jilks had promised. The roses and the lilies made it what Mrs. Jilks called a perfect bower. "Any one could tell," she assured him, "that it was the young lady you was expecting. Why, it's like a wedding already! She's sure to come soon, sir, and I'll have the kettle on the boil and make her a nice cup of tea the minute she comes."
But she did not come, and he had the nice cup of tea alone, unless you count Charles, who ate seven large doughnuts—seven for sixpence—in seven great gulps—with no resultant modification of his natural high spirits. Another day went by, and another, and she did not come. Edward realized that she would not come, and that he had been a fool ever to half hope that she would.
He drugged the empty hours with shopping. He wandered about London buying things—the oddest things. He bought a pair of cut-crystal lusters and the skin of a leopard, a papier-mâché fire-screen and a string of amber beads six feet long. He sent the amber to her in a sandalwood box cunningly carved and inlaid with ivory and ebony and silver. That was on the first day. Her second letter thanked him for it:
How did you know that yellow was my fortunate color? I was born under the sign of the lion, so a fortune-teller told me, so all yellow stones are lucky for me. I am so sorry that you have to be in London in the summer. Wouldn't you like to go into the country? Auntie is a little better.