Eve was not at home at luncheon time, so Vansittart went off to his club, and only returned to Charles Street at Eve’s usual hour for afternoon tea, when he was told that Mrs. Vansittart had gone out at three o’clock, and had left a note for him in the study.
The note was a letter.
“I am taking a step which will no doubt make you angry,” Eve began, “but I cannot help myself. I cannot go on living as we are living now. Every hour of my life increases my misery. I have been told that you visit that woman—that woman who is the cause of all my unhappiness. I have been told that it is you who brought her to London, and had her educated for the stage; that her child is your child. I ought to have known all this without being told; but I shut my eyes to the truth. I wanted so to believe in you. I clung so desperately to that which makes the happiness of my life. You accuse me of unreasoning jealousy; but could any wife help being jealous, seeing what I have seen, hearing what I hear? That woman’s face and manner spoke volumes. I tried to accept your explanation—tried to believe you. I had even begun to feel happy again, when I learnt this hateful fact of your visit to her house. I cannot believe that you would have gone there, knowing my feelings on the subject, if this love of the past had not been more to you than your love for me, your wife. There is but one thing for me to do, only one thing which can set my mind at rest, or make me wretched for ever; and that is to see this woman, and hear her story from her own lips. I have no fear that I shall fail in getting at the truth when she and I are face to face. Woman against woman, wife against mistress, I know who will be the stronger.
“If I have wronged you, my beloved, your wife in penitent love. If you have wronged me, your wife no longer—Eve.”
A pleasant letter to greet a husband on his home-coming.
“Woman against woman, face to face, those two!” thought Vansittart. “She will discover—not that which she fears to discover, but a darker secret—and then it will be as she has said, my wife no longer.”
He stood with his finger on the button of the bell till a servant came.
“A hansom instantly, but be sure you get a good horse,” he said, and went into the hall to wait for the man’s return.