“I shall ring, Annie,” she told the parlor maid, and the girl disappeared. Then she turned to Lexy. “The letter has come,” she said.
Lexy stared at her with such an expression of amazement and dismay that Mrs. Enderby smiled.
“You are very young,” she said. “You wish always for the dramatic. When you have lived as long as I, you will see that such things do not happen.”
She spoke kindly, and Lexy saw in her dark eyes a look of weariness and pain.
“No, my child,” she went on. “In this life it is always the same things that happen again and again. At twenty, one breaks the heart for a man; at forty, one breaks the heart for one’s child. There is only that—and money. Love and money—nothing else!”
Lexy felt extraordinarily sorry for Mrs. Enderby; but even yet she couldn’t quite believe that Caroline could have done such a thing.
“But do you mean that she’s really—that she’s—” she began.
“See, then!” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is the letter!”
Lexy took it from her, and read:
Chere Maman: