“Surely you pay no heed to such irresponsible tales?”
“If they were all! Do you suppose I do not hear what people say besides? They do not spare my ears! Do you think I do not know the stories—what they used to say of your bachelor affairs—with Lady Oxford, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster—and Caro Lamb?”
“Is there none more recent?” A bitter smile had appeared, called by the veiled insinuation in her tone.
Another name flew to her tongue, for malicious rumor had credited him with a footlight amour. “Yes—Jane Clermont!”
A frown of incredulity and annoy hung blackly on his brow an instant. Had this baseless gratuitous fling gone beyond the circle of Drury Lane gossipers? Had it even reached his wife’s ears? Aloud he said:
“Really, I can scarcely hold myself responsible for silly chatterers who are determined to Rochefoucauld my motives. I seem to be fast becoming the moral Æsop of the community. I am judged by what I presume Dr. Cassidy would call a dramatic Calvinism—predestined damnation without a sinner’s own fault.”
Her control was gone. She could not trust herself to speak further and turned away. He waited a moment in the doorway, but she did not move, and with an even “good night” he left her.
At the foot of the stair, during Gordon’s painful interview, a black-gowned woman had noiselessly bent over the hall table. A letter, arrived by the post, had been laid there by Fletcher for his master. She lifted it and examined it closely. The address was written in a peculiar, twirly handwriting, on blue-tinted paper that bore in each corner the device of a cockle-shell. She listened, then passed with it into the library.
The room was unlighted, but a spring fire flickered on the hearth. She caught up a paper-knife and crouching by the hearth held its thin blade in the flame. When the metal was warmed, she softened the edges of the seal and with deftness that betrayed long practice, split it off without its breaking, opened the note and read it. Her basilisk eyes lighted with satisfaction—the triumph of a long quest rewarded. Then she warmed the wax again, replaced it, and as it hardened, broke it across as if the letter had been opened in the ordinary manner.