She seemed to have no fear of him, though his face was rather terrible. "I meant to destroy it from the first," she said coldly, "but I was afraid to. I took it back with me to London. One day I read in a paper that your wife was supposed to have burned it while she was insane. She was insane, was she not? Ah, well, that is not my affair; but I burned it for her that afternoon."
They were moving on again. He stopped her once more.
"Why have you told me this?" he cried. "Was it not enough for you that I should think she did it?"
"No," Lady Pippinworth answered, "that was not enough for me. I always wanted you to know that I had done it."
"And you wrote that letter, you filled me with joy, so that you should gloat over my disappointment?"
"Horrid of me, was it not!" said she.
"Why did you not tell me when we met the other day?"
"I bided my time, as the tragedians say."
"You would not have told me," Tommy said, staring into her face, "if you had thought I cared for you. Had you thought I cared for you a little jot—"
"I should have waited," she confessed, "until you cared for me a great deal, and then I should have told you. That, I admit, was my intention."