"Dear, happy, sweet Theo!"
"And that horrid Mrs. Wodehouse—Anne, he has told me all about his wives. They all died perfectly natural deaths. When his last wife died he wanted to throw himself in the grave."
"Theo, please don't talk that way—I wouldn't say such a thing about William for—"
"And he says if I die he means to marry another American girl."
"Oh, please, please, Theo," cried Anne in a distressed voice.
Just then Sir John sauntered in, smiling and bland, with a request for some music.
Although Theodora had told Anne the truth about some things, she had not told her the whole truth. She saw very plainly that Sir John kept back more than he told about her predecessors. But this story has been a total failure if its readers do not yet know that Theodora possessed a superb and matchless courage that might well make Sir John tremble. Nor had Sir John been married to this dauntless creature five months without seeing that the was made of sterner stuff than poor Fatima and the rest. Each had felt, in golden days by Como's lake and in starlit Venetian nights, that sometime or other there would come a tussle for ascendency, and by a sort of tacit arrangement it was postponed until their arrival at Blood Hall. When Theodora had asked for her sister Anne's company, Sir John had taken it as a confession of weakness. Theodora, on the contrary, when she had carried her point, felt flushed with victory. Naturally she kept a sharp lookout for the closet which Mrs. Wodehouse had dwelt upon; and in forty-eight hours after her arrival she had pitched upon it. It opened into a pleasant room which Sir John called his study, and where he usually spent his mornings. The door was of black Spanish oak, beautifully carved in early English designs. Theodora had mapped out a campaign in which that closet figured, and about two weeks after her arrival she opened hostilities.
One stormy December night, Theodora, leaving Anne cowering over the drawing-room fire, sauntered off into Sir John's study, carrying her favorite poodle in her arms.
"Come in," said he in response to her knock, and rising with ready courtesy. "You'll excuse my continuing my paper," he remarked, wheeling a comfortable chair to the sparkling wood fire for her.