I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a church, and asked how was the Baron.
Improving—would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children.
It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so.
When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course, that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she made her excuses to her guest and went with me.
She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not move.
"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else, because—you see?—I hope you do. I thought—well, frankly, I thought if I should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have sent it?"
"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?"
Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said—and the words seemed to drop from my lips unthought—"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, although the handwriting is disguised."
Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement with her tiny boots—and tremble.
"I—I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so—so—imprudent—my husband's happiness required——"