"Yours affectionately,
"Hugo Tancred."
Still as a statue sat Jan. From the garden came the cheerful chirruping of birds and constant, eager questioning of Earley by the children. Earley's slow Gloucestershire speech rumbled on in muffled obbligato to the higher, carrying, little voices.
The whirr of a sewing-machine came from the morning-room, now the day-nursery, where Meg was busy with frocks for little Fay.
In a distant pantry somebody was clinking teacups. Jan shivered, though the air from the open window was only fresh, not cold. At that moment she knew exactly how an animal feels when caught in a trap. Hugo Tancred's letter was the trap, and she was in it. With the ex
ception of the lie about other letters—Jan was perfectly sure he had written no other letters—and the stereotyped phrases about shattered lamps and the wife who was "no more," the letter was one long menace—scarcely veiled. That sentence, "in so far as you make it possible for me to do so, I will fall in with your wishes regarding them in every way," simply meant that if Jan was to keep the children she must let Hugo make ducks and drakes of her money; and if he took her money, how could she do what she ought for the children?
And he was at Port Said; only a week's journey.
Why had she left that money in Bombay? Why had she not listened to Peter? Sometimes she had thought that Peter held rather a cynically low view of his fellow-creatures—some of his fellow-creatures. Surely no one could be all bad? Jan had hoped great things of adversity for Hugo Tancred. Peter indulged in no such pleasant illusions, and said so. "Schoolgirl sentimentality" Meg had called it, and so it was. "No doubt it will be possible to find some cheap preparatory school for Tony."
Would he try to steal Tony?
From the charitable mood that hopeth all things Jan suddenly veered to a belief in all things evil of her brother-in-law. At that moment she felt him capable of murdering the child and throwing his little body down a well, as they do in India.
Again she shivered.