I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.
I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.
I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.
What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Véronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."
Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.
When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.
Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.
I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.
Wednesday, very early.
I forgot to wind up my watch.