Peter had risen. He laid his shapely, white old hand upon the woman’s shoulder. “Tell me when you want to give it up. I shall be glad.”
Thus it was arranged. Good Humour gained circulation and—of more importance yet—advertisements; and Miss Ramsbotham, as she had predicted, the reputation of being one of the best-dressed women in London. Her reason for desiring such reputation Peter Hope had shrewdly guessed. Two months later his suspicions were confirmed. Mr. Reginald Peters, his uncle being dead, was on his way back to England.
His return was awaited with impatience only by the occupants of the little flat in the Marylebone Road; and between these two the difference of symptom was marked. Mistress Peggy, too stupid to comprehend the change that had been taking place in her, looked forward to her lover’s arrival with delight. Mr. Reginald Peters, independently of his profession, was in consequence of his uncle’s death a man of means. Miss Ramsbotham’s tutelage, which had always been distasteful to her, would now be at an end. She would be a “lady” in the true sense of the word—according to Miss Peggy’s definition, a woman with nothing to do but eat and drink, and nothing to think of but dress. Miss Ramsbotham, on the other hand, who might have anticipated the home-coming of her quondam admirer with hope, exhibited a strange condition of alarmed misery, which increased from day to day as the date drew nearer.
The meeting—whether by design or accident was never known—took place at an evening party given by the proprietors of a new journal. The circumstance was certainly unfortunate for poor Peggy, whom Bohemia began to pity. Mr. Peters, knowing both women would be there and so on the look-out, saw in the distance among the crowd of notabilities a superbly millinered, tall, graceful woman, whose face recalled sensations he could not for the moment place. Chiefly noticeable about her were her exquisite neck and arms, and the air of perfect breeding with which she moved, talking and laughing, through the distinguished, fashionable throng. Beside her strutted, nervously aggressive, a vulgar, fat, pimply, shapeless young woman, attracting universal attention by the incongruity of her presence in the room. On being greeted by the graceful lady of the neck and arms, the conviction forced itself upon him that this could be no other than the once Miss Ramsbotham, plain of face and indifferent of dress, whose very appearance he had almost forgotten. On being greeted gushingly as “Reggie” by the sallow-complexioned, over-dressed young woman he bowed with evident astonishment, and apologised for a memory that, so he assured the lady, had always been to him a source of despair.
Of course, he thanked his stars—and Miss Ramsbotham—that the engagement had never been formal. So far as Mr. Peters was concerned, there was an end to Mistress Peggy’s dream of an existence of everlasting breakfasts in bed. Leaving the Ramsbotham flat, she returned to the maternal roof, and there a course of hard work and plain living tended greatly to improve her figure and complexion; so that in course of time, the gods smiling again upon her, she married a foreman printer, and passes out of this story.
Meanwhile, Mr. Reginald Peters—older, and the possessor, perhaps, of more sense—looked at Miss Ramsbotham with new eyes, and now not tolerated but desired her. Bohemia waited to assist at the happy termination of a pretty and somewhat novel romance. Miss Ramsbotham had shown no sign of being attracted elsewhere. Flattery, compliment, she continued to welcome; but merely, so it seemed, as favourable criticism. Suitors more fit and proper were now not lacking, for Miss Ramsbotham, though a woman less desirable when won, came readily to the thought of wooing. But to all such she turned a laughing face.
“I like her for it,” declared Susan Fossett; “and he has improved—there was room for it—though I wish it could have been some other. There was Jack Herring—it would have been so much more suitable. Or even Joe, in spite of his size. But it’s her wedding, not ours; and she will never care for anyone else.”
And Bohemia bought its presents, and had them ready, but never gave them. A few months later Mr. Reginald Peters returned to Canada, a bachelor. Miss Ramsbotham expressed her desire for another private interview with Peter Hope.
“I may as well keep on the Letter to Clorinda,” thought Miss Ramsbotham. “I have got into the knack of it. But I will get you to pay me for it in the ordinary way.”
“I would rather have done so from the beginning,” explained Peter.