“This lady,” cried Shelmerdene, “once had a lover——”
“Scarcely a crime,” said Lucifer. “Heaven has long since given up rejecting women who have had lovers. The angels protested that they found none but plain women wherever they walked in Paradise.”
“But she killed him!” cried Shelmerdene.
“Come, Shelmerdene!” said Dame Warp bitterly: “No decent woman—I said no decent woman—ever kills her lover.”
“Shelmerdene, are you sure I did?” sighed Lady Surplice. “Are you quite sure, dear? Did I really kill him?”
“You did, darling, I assure you,” said Shelmerdene. “You bored him to death. He begged me with his dying breath not to tell you, and I wouldn’t have if I weren’t so fond of you.”
“Then,” sighed the Prince of Darkness, “she may go to Hell.”
And, said Dwight-Rankin, even as the door was seen to close, it was also seen how all colour was instantly ravished from Lady Surplice’s face and how she sat in her chair still and cold. But even in death, said Dwight-Rankin, a smile of such happiness lit her face that her many friends, who never could think of her departure from among them but with the deepest regret, found solace in the certainty of the good lady’s contentment in the other world. However....
At the inquest it was naturally given out that Lady Surplice had died in some natural way: for who, asked Dwight-Rankin, would believe the tale of what had actually happened, who would believe the tale of him who called himself, with infinite mockery, Captain Charity? And who, continued Dwight-Rankin, would believe that, but for the kindly intervention of Shelmerdene, the spiritual parts of poor Lady Surplice would even now and forever be arranged in that position over the ivory parapets of Paradise in which she could most comfortably stare down, with intolerable longing, at the social gaieties of another place?
“Who, indeed!” I echoed gloomily.