He no longer dared look Helia in the face. Under Ethel’s clear eyes his conscience had awakened.
One evening, weary of the ideas that beset him, Phil had thrown himself on a sofa in the music-room, when he saw Ethel enter, seat herself, and absently take up a book which chanced to be lying there. She cut one page and looked through it, two pages, ten pages. Then, suddenly, she arose angrily. Phil was astounded.
“Do you understand?” Ethel asked him. “He dares to offer me this filthy book with the author’s compliments! I have only read a few lines, and it nauseates me.”
“Of what book are you speaking, Miss Rowrer?” Phil asked.
“Of ‘The House of Glass,’ which Caracal has dared to offer me.” And Ethel showed Phil the volume, with its modern-style cover decorated by creeping plants and monkeys’ tails.
“Would you believe it?” Ethel continued. “The poor fool is trying to be gallant with me. Every day he composes a sonnet in my honor. There’s no great harm in that; but since he is the author of ‘The House of Glass,’ it has another meaning. Here, Phil, take the book, I beg of you, and throw it overboard. But, wait a minute, we’ll throw to-day’s sonnet with it. Only give me time to open the envelop—you’ll see how grotesque it is.”
Ethel opened the envelop, but she had scarcely glanced through the letter it contained when she grew pale with wrath and pride.
“What an outrage!” she exclaimed, in her fury. “See, Phil, Caracal made a mistake in addressing his envelop. He has sent the sonnet on to Paris and put here, instead of it, a letter to Vieillecloche. Richard the Lion-hearted! Those attacks which vexed me so,—they came from him. He has a family arrangement for it with Vieillecloche. Look, Phil, read, read! What do you think of that? Is it not infamous? He attacks us for pay!”
Phil was indignant. The letter left no possible doubt. He already could see Caracal disembarked in a hurry at the first port, and going down the gangway crushed by his shame.
“But he also attacked you once, Phil. How is it you didn’t pull his ears?”