“What is it?” asked the other, perfunctorily.
Mrs. Edward had been, shuffling the envelopes in her hand the while she spoke, and idly noting their superscriptions. She held up one of them now, in explanation of her remark.
“Well, talk of the devil, you know—I was speaking of my sister Frank, and here’s a letter from her. She hasn’t written a line to me in—how long is it?—why, it must be—well, certainly not since I was married. Funny, isn’t it? I wonder if it’s anything about the pater.”
She continued to regard the sealed missive absent-mindedly, as if the resource of opening it had not yet suggested itself to her. In the meantime, something else occurred to her, and she turned to face Lady Cressage, who had seated herself again.
“I meant what I said about these men Eddy’s brought down,” she declared. “I didn’t want them to be asked, and I don’t like their being here, any more than you do. Yes, I want to have you understand,” she persisted, as the other offered a gesture of deprecation, “I hope I’m the last person in the world to round on old pals, but really, as I told Eddy, a man in his position must draw the line somewhere. I don’t mind giving a leg-up to old Pirie—in a quiet way, of course—for he’s not half a bad sort by himself; but as for the rest, what are they? I don’t care for their families or their commissions—I’ve seen too much of the world to be taken in by kid of that sort—I say they’re bounders. I never was what you might call keen about them as the right friends for Eddy, even before—I mean in the old days, when it didn’t matter so much what company he kept. But now, with everything so altered, he ought to see that they’re not in his class at all. And that’s just what I can’t get him to do in the least.”
“Men have their own views in these matters. They are often rather difficult to understand,” commented Edith, sententiously.
“I should think so!” began Mrs. Edward. “Why, if I were a man, and in Eddy’s place—”
Her words had ended aimlessly, as her eyes followed the lines of the letter she had at last opened and begun to read. She finished the brief task, and then, going back to the top of the single page, went over it again more attentively. There was something indefinably impressive about the silence in which she did this, and Lady Cressage presently raised an inquiring glance. Mrs. Edward’s face exhibited no marked change of expression, but it had turned deathly pale. The unabated redness of the lips gave this pallor a ghastliness which frightened Edith, and brought her to her feet.
“What in the name—” she began, but the other held up a black-gloved hand.
“Is this something you know about?—something you’ve been putting up?” Cora demanded, in a harsh, ungoverned voice, moving forward as she spoke. “Look at this. Here’s what my sister writes.” She did not offer to show the letter, but huskily read forth its contents: