“But you had letters from him. You say yourself he never wrote to you like that. It’s me he’s writing to, not you.”
“Well, of all the conceited things!” cried Agnes.
“I’m glad I am. I’ll give you Edouard back, if you’re going to make such a row.”
“I don’t want him.”
“All right, that settles it. It wouldn’t be fair to Jean to give him back to you.”
“Fair! Lots you care about fair.”
“Do you think it’s fair to pass a soldier of France—one of our allies—back and forth between mothers, like a bean-bag?”
“I have nothing more to say. I have found you out, Isabelle Bryce. I give to you generously, and you prove a false friend.”
Agnes walked away with her face flushed and her head high. It was too bad to be treated like this when you were doing your patriotic duty. She brooded on the matter for several days, avoiding her false friend, and then an idea of revenge took possession of her.
Chance played into her hands at the moment, by putting into her lap a copy of a fashionable magazine. It had two pages of pictures of the idlers at Bermuda. An enlarged snapshot of Isabelle coming out of the sea, was featured with a brief biographic sketch of her meteoric career as actress, of her family, and her wealth. Agnes cut this out, enclosing it with an anonymous letter to Petard. She told of the miserable trick played upon him. Isabelle was only seventeen and a half, and in no way fit to be a god-mother to him. She was infatuated with him, and pretended to be old, so she would have an excuse to write him.