"Afraid? Of Col-Col? What do you take me for?"
"Well—" Adeline meditated. "It isn't as if Mrs. Benning wasn't here."
Mrs. Benning was the housekeeper.
"That'll make it all right and proper. The fact is, I must have a rest and change before the winter. I hardly ever get away, as you know. And Evelyn would like to have me. I think I must go."
"Of course you must go," Anne said.
And Adeline went.
At the end of the first week she wrote:
12 Eaton Square. November 3d, 1915.
Darling Anne,—Will you be very much surprised to hear that your father and I are going to be married? You mayn't know it, but he has loved me all his life. We were to have married once (you knew that), and I jilted him. But he has never changed. He has been so faithful and forgiving, and has waited for me so patiently—twenty-seven years, Anne—that I hadn't the heart to refuse him. I feel that I must make up to him for all the pain I've given him.
We want you to come up for the wedding on the 10th. It will be very quiet. No bridesmaids. No party. We think it best not to have it at Wyck, on Colin's account. So I shall just be married from Evelyn's house.