“He’ll feel her death,” said Parker. “It’s hard luck on him.”
“Suggest something better then,” snapped Barrett.
But though we thought over the matter until late into the night we could think of nothing better. Barrett, who seemed to have mislaid all his impudent self-confidence, departed at last saying he would see to it.
“Who would have thought it,” said Parker to me as I followed him to lock him out. “And so Maitland is a live man, after all.” We stood and looked across the court to Maitland’s windows, who was still burning the midnight oil.
“You don’t think he’ll ever get wind of this,” I said.
“You may trust Barrett,” Parker replied. “Good-night.”
Barrett proved trustworthy. He and Parker laid their heads together, and it was finally decided that Maud’s aunt should write Maitland a letter from Paris describing her sudden death, and how she had enjoined on her aunt to break it to Maitland, and to send him the little ring she always wore. After much cogitation they decided that Maud should send him a death-bed message, in which she was to own that she loved him. Barrett thought it would comfort him immensely if she had loved him at first sight, so he put it in. And though he was frightfully short of money he went up to London and got a very nice little ring with a forget-me-not in turquoises on it, for the same amount he had won off us about Maitland’s moustache. I think he was glad as it was blood money in a way (if you can call a moustache blood) that it should go back to Maitland.
The old aunt’s letter was a masterpiece. At any other time Barrett’s artistic sense would have revelled in it, but he was out of spirits, and only carried the matter through by a kind of doggedness. The letter was prim and stilted, but humane, and the writer was obviously a little hurt by the late discovery that her dear niece had concealed anything from her. She returned all the letters which she said her niece had evidently treasured, and said that she was returning heartbroken to her house in Pimlico the same day, and would, of course, see him if he wished it, but she supposed that one so busy as Maitland would hardly be able to spare the time. The letter was obviously written under the supposition that the address in Pimlico was familiar to him. It was signed in full. Yours faithfully, Maud Markham.
Barrett got a friend whom he could rely on to post the packet on his way through Paris.