"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you."
"I will tell her."
Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. On ne peut s'appuyer que contre ce qui résiste. Though Colonel Bellairs did not know it, he was always wanting to s'appuyer. He had found in his daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in his wife, who had not resisted him.
"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a moment's peace?"
Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, upright hand, marked Private, at the top.
"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen.
"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'"
"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably.
Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as she and her father walked slowly back to the house.
It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom.