Mrs. Royce was completely won.
“I’m real glad to do it for you,” she said. “I won’t bother you, neither, while you’re working. I know how it is with writing. My cousin, now—her husband was writing for the movies, an’ he was that upset if he was disturbed!”
Still conversing with great affability, Mrs. Royce led the reluctant writer upstairs to the small room prepared for her, and shut her in. Lexy sat down in a chair before the workmanlike table, and grinned ruefully. She had said she was a writer, and now she had to be one.
“Well,” she reflected, “here’s a chance to write to Mr. Houseman, anyhow.”
She never had the least difficulty in writing letters. For one reason, she never bothered about them unless she had something to say, and then she said it, briefly and lucidly, and was done. She told Mr. Houseman all she knew about Caroline’s disappearance, and explained that she had gone out to Wyngate in the hope of picking up some trace of her.
“Of course,” she wrote, “I don’t know whether I’ll still be here when you get back. If I’ve gone, I’ll leave my address with Mrs. Royce, in case you should want to communicate with me.”
This was admirable, so far; but, reading it over, Lexy was not satisfied. She remembered the misery, the trouble and anxiety, in Mr. Houseman’s blue eyes. She imagined him sailing the seas, bitterly hurt because he thought Caroline had changed her mind. She thought of him coming back and getting this letter, to revive all his alarm for Caroline. This wasn’t, after all, a business letter. She took up her pen again, and added:
I think I can imagine how you feel about all this, and I am more sorry than I can tell you. I hope we shall meet soon.
This last phrase rather astonished her. She hadn’t meant to write just that. She picked up the letter, intending to tear it up and write another; but she thought better of it.
“No!” she said to herself. “Let it stay. It’s true; why shouldn’t I hope that we’ll meet again?”