Now she sprang up in a hurry, hastened to an escritoire, and dashed off a letter in a very scamper of haste.
At last, then, the floods had broken their gates, for this is what she wrote:
My dear, my dear, I was brutal to you that night at the sun-dial. But it was necessary, if I was to maintain the severity which I felt that your lack of frankness to me deserved. Inwardly there was a terribly weak spot, of which I was afraid; and if you had come after me when I left you, and had commanded me, or prayed me, or touched me, no doubt it would have been all up with me. Forgive me, then, if I seemed over harsh where, I'm afraid, I am disposed to be rather too infinitely lenient. At present, you see, I quite lack the self-restraint to keep from telling you that I am sorry for you.... I was present at the inquest.... Pity is like lightning; it fills, it burns up, it enlightens ... see me here struck with it!... You are not without a friend, one who knows you, judges you, and acquits you.... If you want to come to me, come!... I once thought well of a Mr. Glyn, but, like a flirt, will forget him, if Osborne is of the same manner, speaks with the same voice.... My mother is usually good to me....
She enclosed it in a flurry of excitement, ran to the bell-rope, rang, and while waiting for a servant held the envelope in the manner of one who is on the very point of tearing a paper in two, but halts to see on which cheek the wind will hit. In the midst of this suspense of indecision the door opened; and now, straightway, she hastened to it, and got rid of the letter, saying rapidly in a dropped voice, confidentially:
"Pauline, put that in the pillar-box at once for me, will you?"
Another moment and she stood alone there, with a shocked and beating heart, the deed done, past recall now.
As for Pauline Dessaulx, she was half-way down the stairs when she chanced to look at the envelope. "Rupert Osborne, Esq." She started! Everything connected with that name was of infinite interest to her! But she had not dreamt that Miss Marsh knew it, save as everyone else knew it now, from public gossip and the papers.
She had never seen Rosalind Marsh, or her mother, till the day of their arrival from the country. It was but ten days earlier that she had become the servant of a Mrs. Prawser, a friend of Mrs. Marsh's, who kept a private boarding-house, being in reduced circumstances. Then, after but an interval of peace and security, the Marshes had come, and as she let them in, and they were being embraced by Mrs. Prawser, Inspector Clarke had appeared at the door, nearly striking her dead with agitation, and demanding of her the diary, which she had handed him.
Luckily, luckily, she had been wise enough before that to scratch out with many thick scratches of the pen the name that had been written by the actress before the initials C. E. F. in that passage where the words appeared: "If I am killed this night it will be by —— or by C. E. F." But suppose she had not shown such sense and daring, what then? She shivered at the thought.
And a new problem now tortured her. Was it somehow owing to the fact that Miss Marsh knew Osborne that Inspector Clarke had come upon her at the moment of the two ladies' arrival? What was the relation between Miss Marsh and Osborne? What was in this letter? It might be well to see....