Rudolph Musgrave, however, had not honored her with much attention, and was puzzling over the more or less incomprehensible situation; and, perceiving this, she ran on, after a little:
"Oh, it worked—it worked beautifully! You see, she would always have been very jealous of that other woman; but with me it is different. She has always known that scandalous story about you and me. And she has always known me as I am—a frivolous and—say, corpulent, for it is a more dignified word—and generally unattractive chaperon; and she can't think of me as ever having been anything else. Young people never really believe in their elders' youth, Rudolph; at heart, they think we came into the world with crow's-feet and pepper-and-salt hair, all complete. So, she is only sorry for you now—rather as a mother would be for a naughty child; as for me, she isn't jealous—but," sighed Mrs. Pendomer, "she isn't over-fond of me."
Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. "It isn't fair," said he; "the letters were distinctly compromising. It isn't fair you should shoulder the blame for a woman who was nothing to you. It isn't fair you should be placed in such a false position."
"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing—or not at least to you," she added.
"Still——" he began.
"Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me? What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing pink organdie after she has passed forty, and I have known a woman to go on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why not let me be foolish, if I want to be?"
"If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word of this farrago, I will be—qualified in various ways."
"But you don't have to understand," she pleaded.
"You mean—?" he asked.
"I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow."