"He's drunk," said Steppe and she made no reply. Jan Steppe was very preoccupied all that evening, but not so completely oblivious of realities that he did not bargain with the doctor for certain shares in the Klein River Mine. Just before he had left his house Steppe had received a code cable from Johannesburg.
III
On the morning of Ambrose Sault's execution, Evie found a letter awaiting her at the drug store. Whatever natural unhappiness of feeling she may have had when she left her weeping mother, vanished in the perusal of Ronnie's long epistle. The envelope bore the St. John's Wood postmark, but this she would not have regarded as significant, even if she had noticed it, which she did not.
Not a love letter in the strictest sense; it was too precise and businesslike for that. It gave her certain dates to be cherished, certain instructions to be observed. It went to the length of naming Parisian dressmakers where she might be expeditiously fitted. She was to bring nothing, only a suitcase with bare necessities. A week's stay in Paris would give her all the time she needed to equip herself. It was a trial to her that she would not see Ronnie for a month, not until the great day—she caught her breath at the thought. But he had stipulated this. Ronnie was too keen a student of women to give her the opportunity of changing her mind. His letters could not be argued with, or questioned.
And the month would quickly pass. Teddy Williams was a faithful attendant and, although he could not be compared in any respect with Ronnie, it was pleasant and flattering to extend her patronage to one who hung upon her words and regarded her as an authority upon most subjects.
She had imparted her views on marriage to Teddy, and that young man had been impressed without being convinced.
Ronnie's letter was to be read and re-read. She expected another the next day and, when it did not come, she was disappointed. Yet he had not promised to write; in his letter he had said: "Until you are my very own, I shall live the life of an anchorite."
She looked up "anchorite" and found that it meant "one who retires from society to a desert or solitary place to avoid the temptations of the world and to devote himself to religious exercises," and accepted this as a satisfactory explanation, though she couldn't imagine Ronnie engaging himself in religious exercises.
Life ran normally at home, now that Mr. Sault was dead. Evie had felt very keenly the disgrace of having a lodger who was a murderer. Only the fact that Ronnie knew him, too, and to some extent shared in the general odium, prevented her from enlarging upon the scandal to her mother and Christina. Beyond her comprehension was her sister's remarkable cheerfulness. Christina didn't seem to care whether Mr. Sault was alive or dead. She was her own caustic self and the shadow of her proper woe failed to soften or sadden her.