"See here, Clarice, I have known you——"
"You have not!" cried she, very earnestly; "not by five years!"
"Well, say for some time. You are a sensible woman——"
"A man," Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a woman of discretion, until she begins to lose her waist."
"—and I am sure that I can rely upon your womanly tact, and finer instincts,—and that sort of thing, you know—to help me out of a deuce of a mess."
Mrs. Pendomer ate on, in an exceedingly noncommittal fashion, as he paused, inquiringly.
"She has been reading some letters," said he, at length; "some letters that I wrote a long time ago."
"In the case of so young a girl," observed Mrs. Pendomer, with perfect comprehension, "I should have undoubtedly recommended a judicious supervision of her reading-matter."
"She was looking through an old escritoire," he explained; "Jack
Charteris had suggested that some of my father's letters—during the
War, you know—. might be of value—"
He paused, for Mrs. Pendomer appeared on the verge of a question.