“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t create old Mr. Gadney and send him to church to keep us talking in the street like that. I did not see you. You couldn’t have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feel dreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestine correspondence and must stop at once? You mustn’t ever write to me again, nor I mustn’t see you. Of course I can’t help seeing you in church and on the street—and I can’t help thinking about you. They’ll be making me try and stop breathing next. I don’t care a button for the whole lot of them. It was all Aunt Susan’s doing, only for her my people would never have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn’t have been so miserable. I feel sometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I would never see any people again.
“It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by the same hand.”
There was no signature and no date.
Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was no address. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the old-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It was vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres and the ladies of the forties.
She laid the letter down and took up the next.
“It is wicked of you. My people never would be so mean as to quarrel with your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Why did you say that—and you know I said in my last letter that I could not write to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passing her on the stairs and handed me your note—Don’t you—don’t you—how shall I say it? Don’t you think you and I could meet and speak to one another somewhere instead of always writing like this? Somewhere where no one could see us. Do you know—do you know—do you, ahem! O dear me—know that just inside our gate there’s a little arbour. The tiniest place. When I was a child I used to play there with Mary at keeping house, there’s a seat just big enough for two and we used to sit there with our dolls. No one can see the gate from the lower piazza, and the gate doesn’t make any noise opening, for father had it oiled—it used to squeak a bit from rust, but it doesn’t now and I’ll be there to-morrow night at nine—in the arbour—at least I may be there. I just want to tell you in a way I can’t in a letter that my people aren’t the sort of folk to sneer at any one because they have lost money.
“I am sending this by P.
“The arbour is just back of the big magnolia as you come in, on the left.”
Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed eyes she kissed the letter, laid it softly on the floor beside the first and went on to the next.
“Not to-night. I have to go to the Calhouns. It is just as well, for I have a dread of people suspecting if we meet too often. No one sees us meet. No one knows, and yet I fear them finding out just by instinct. Father said to me the other day, ‘What makes you seem so happy these times?’ If Mary had been alive she would have found out long ago, for I never could keep anything hid from her. I was nearly saying to him, ‘If you want to know why I am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by the gate.’