I found out everything and began to believe S. K.’s remark about sanity and logical reasons for all events. I even found out about Jane’s blushes and the ice-pick. It seemed she used to give Debson suppers when he came up, and she gave him a very nice grape juice that aunt had got for Evelyn. It was that that made her so anxious to speak of thefts as borrowing. . . . And again there was coincidence in the hurt hands. All but Debson’s had happened from innocent causes. His came from my mouse-trap, but to throw people off the scent he deliberately broke that Stiegel glass.
Of course, I was shadowed and followed, and it was Debson’s brother who pulled me from my mount on Riverside Drive. . . . Two men who are very intent on getting anything can think lots of ways to get it, and--twenty-five thousand dollars is quite an incentive. I felt sorry for the men--I couldn’t help it--and for Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez, for I was afraid Marguerita would never marry him.
I wrote Señor Vicente Alcon y Rodriguez and told him how sorry I was and that I would give him my bracelet if my mother had not owned and worn it, and that I hoped perhaps Señorita Blanco y Chiappi could get one made like it. And I explained about how nice Evelyn’s was. I really wanted to send my bracelet to Señor Alcon y Rodriguez, but S. K., who occasionally gives me orders quite as if he had every right to, would not permit it.
“Nonsense!” he said. “She’s only tiring him out. After he begins to gasp and shows signs of giving up, she’ll pull him in the boat. I know ’em!” which I considered cynical. But she did. Just that very thing happened, and I got a piece of wedding cake. They were married January twentieth after an engagement of two days. He answered my note most courteously and apologized at length. And she added a little line.
“I have capitulated,” she acknowledged, in a very shaded, elaborate writing. “It is useless to allow innocent childs to be stabbed in back because of my light mention of a bracelet, and because of his great urgency I have achieved for myself the married state. We are happy and wish you the same.”
And then she said she kissed my feet, which is very polite Spanish, and signed herself undyingly and affectionately mine.
Señor Vicente gave S. K.’s words backing when he wrote: “I was willing to give up. All was despair. I vowed I would not request again, when lo! she softened and turned to me the glory of her love.”
I was glad it ended that way.
“What are you thinking of?” asked S. K. that afternoon of February fourteenth when we were all together and yet--all sort of paired off in the living-room. I told him.
“You like to see people love the people who love them,” I said. “Now Evelyn has answered the right call, and I think Amy is going to.”