Belknap, without looking her way, knew that Nadia stiffened and straightened at the words. As for the others, their eyes turned to Whittaker expectantly, but with no premonitory awakening.
“I had planned letting you learn of what I intend when it had ceased to be an intention and become an actuality. In other words, you were only to know of the publication of my memoirs when you saw them in print. But I really can’t resist a little boasting in advance, and I thought I might read scraps of them after dinner to the assembled gathering, before we get down to bridge.”
“Oh, how wonderful of you, Uncle Bertrand,” Joel exclaimed, eager to help him, as she thought, tide over the embarrassing moment. “I didn’t know you were writing. You have so many irons in the fire, how did you find time to do a book? But it must have been pretty good fun, so much has happened to you.”
“It isn’t recent, Joel; it’s been written at odd moments over a period of twenty years. In other words, it’s my Diary. But it is packed full of material, and all sorts of things. Everybody’s in it. Oh yes, you are all there, my dears.”
“You talk like Red Riding Hood’s wolf, Bertrand,” Nadia said with cold acidity, and at her tone the first chill, like the first autumn frost, fell on them all. “Just what do you mean when you say we are in it?”
“Exactly that, Nadia darling. I hope you are in it to the life, as I’m sure I am.”
“You mean it is a character portrayal of your friends and foes as well as a revelation of your own nature—you sinner,” she added with bitter lightness.
“You express it in a nutshell.”
Blake spoke.
“By what right does one betray one’s friends—even in the cause of literature; and you will excuse me, Whittaker, if I doubt the literary merits of your pen.”