He went on tiptoe to the door and peered cautiously out into the hall. She wasn’t there. Where was she? He was certain that she hadn’t given up and gone away. She was after that letter, and she wouldn’t go without it.
"She’s ill, though," he muttered. "Beastly—savage! Forcing her way in like this! My God, I’ll never be rid of her! What the devil was the matter with me, to get mixed up with a girl like that? I wish she’d break her neck. I wish I had the courage to wring it!"
He stopped suddenly and turned pale; for there on the mantelpiece, before his eyes, was the letter. Courtland had forgotten to mail it!
He flew at it and tore it into bits, like a criminal concealing some trace of his guilt. He was actually capable of imagining that, by this, he had got the better of Angelica.
V
Angelica ran down-stairs to the kitchen, which was deserted, but quite brightly lighted. There, on the back of the coal range, stood what she had expected to see—the teakettle, gently steaming.
She lifted it, and went to the back door. There was a couple—probably Annie and her young man—sitting in the dark on the steps. She turned back, went through the laundry and out of a side door; down the hill, through the grass, where she wouldn’t make a sound. Once she stumbled, and a few drops of scalding water spilled upon her instep. She smothered a shriek of pain, and hurried on.
There wasn’t a soul in sight; the road was quite empty even of passing motors. She crossed to the other side, where the post-box stood, and, raising herself on tiptoe, she poured into it the entire contents of the kettle.
Then she ran into the woods behind the box, and hid the kettle in a clump of thick bushes. She was satisfied that the letter must be destroyed, together with anything else the box may have contained. Her conscience did not reproach her in the least for this possible injury to others.
"There couldn’t be any one," she reflected, "who could want any one else to get a letter as much as I don’t want Eddie to get that one!"