"By Jove, so she's heard it!" he exclaimed; and the instant afterward he added in a kind of grudging admiration, "Well, she's a devil!"
The incident appeared suddenly to engross him in a manner that Laura had not expected, and he stooped to examine the postmark with an attention which gave her, while she watched him, a queer sense of being left out quite in the cold.
"But why, in thunder, should she care?" he demanded.
"She?" there was no trouble in her voice, only an indifferent question.
"Oh, it's Jennie Alta, of course—she's perfectly capable of such a thing." Then, reaching out, he drew Laura into his arms with a confidence which had the air, she thought, of taking the situation almost too entirely for granted—of accepting too readily her attitude as well as his possession of her. "My darling girl, what a regular brick you are!" he said.
Though she realised, as he spoke, that this was the reward of her silence and her struggle, she told herself, in the next breath that, in some way, it was all inadequate. She had expected more than a phrase, and the very fact that the note of earnestness was absent from his voice but made her desire the sound of it the more passionately. Again she felt the baffled sensation which came to her in moments of their closest intimacy. Had his soul, in truth, eluded her for the last time? And was there in the profoundest emotion always a distance which it was forever impossible to bridge? Yet the uncertainty, the very lack of a fuller understanding only added fervour to the passion that burned in her heart.
"It's all over now, so we may as well warm ourselves by the failure of her deviltry," he observed presently, as he flung the crumpled paper into the fire. "I'm downright sorry she'll never know how little harm she's done."
"It might, I suppose, have been worse," suggested Laura.
"Well, I suppose so—and you mean me to believe that you didn't even read it?" he enquired with tender gayety.
She gave him her eyes frankly as an answer to his appeal for faith. "Why should I? I love you," she replied.