Mrs. Prinsep remarked with bitterness that she knew not what imaginative work meant, unless it was a kind of thing which she disliked very much. She half rose, catching Olivia’s eye. The two ladies left the room—Mrs. Prinsep to abuse Perrin and to apply crudely an examination; Olivia to suffer from home-sickness, thinking of her uncle’s letter. Mrs. Prinsep could draw little from her; for Mrs. Prinsep, while suspecting something wrong, naturally suspected a woman of finer beauty than her own of being a party to it. Her theory was that Olivia had run away from her home, and that, being beautiful, she was possibly not correctly married. She liked Stukeley; but she had her duty to herself to consider. She put Olivia through a conventional catechism, in the course of which she asked for particulars of the wedding. Olivia, seeing her drift, replied coldly, in monosyllables.
Meanwhile, in the dining-room, over the wine, Stukeley badgered Margaret to read the letter.
“Read it,” he kept saying. “Read it. Let’s hear what’s in it.”
Howard wondered at his tone; but as he knew something of Stukeley’s affairs, he drew Lewin out of the room, so that the voyagers might read the letter together undisturbed. When he had gone, Margaret opened the packet brought by Lewin. Stukeley picked up his wine-glass and crossed over towards Margaret, so that he, too, might read.
“What do you want, Stukeley?” Margaret asked him.
“I want to read that letter, of course. It’s about me.”
“Do you generally read the letters of others?”
“I’m going to read this.”
“Are you?” Margaret looked at him coolly, finished his letter, and started to read the other. As he had expected, the letters were alike. One had been brought by a merchantman, the other by the man-of-war. The letter was that saddest of all letters, the letter of the old man who asks humbly, knowing the selfishness of youth. That the old man wrote without hope seemed evident to Margaret from the appeal he made to chivalrous sentiment. “I am confident to write to you,” ran the un-confident words, “though we are little acquainted. I had the honour to serve with your father more than forty years ago.” Then there came a request that Captain Margaret would cause Stukeley to be arrested and brought home to trial, so that Olivia might again be under his care. There was also a moving prayer that he, the son of that old brother-in-arms who had ridden with the writer at Newbury forty odd years before, would let Olivia know what her husband had done. She was ignorant of her husband’s nature; but in England it was said that she was not so ignorant. In England her honour seemed smirched, for there were some who saw in her flight the ruse of a criminal and his doxy. It was right that she should know this, and very right that her husband should stand his trial, so that their honour might be cleared. The letter was bitter reading to Margaret. It made him feel that he had stained Olivia’s honour in staining his own, and all for the sake of a ruffian incapable of feeling the sacrifice. If the letter had come before his interview with Howard he would have pleaded differently, child or no child. He looked grave, helped himself to more wine, and handed a letter to Perrin.
“What’s the old boy say?” said Stukeley.