She took up the paper and turned it over; paused, and took up the pen. It was rather like the preliminaries to a letter written by planchette, when the fingers are loose upon the board and the eye fixed on vacancy. Presently she began and wrote a few words rapidly, stopped, wrote again, and this time she was off. She filled the four sides of the paper with what she wrote, and then folded it, screwing up her eyes resolutely. “I daren’t read it,” she said to herself, and pushed it, with shaking fingers, into the envelope, stuck it down and addressed it. Then she went into the hall and opened a cupboard, groped in the dark for a coat, and took the first she touched, which happened to be David’s. She slipped her arms into it, and without stopping for fastenings, wrapped it round her and opened the outer door. The pillar box was about twenty yards away and the letter was posted before anything but the speed of her actions had time to guide her thoughts. When it was done she felt as if she had given the world a kick and sent a villa or two toppling about her ears. “Oh!——” she thought, and “Oh——! suppose it doesn’t work!” She ran back into the house and flung David’s coat upon a seat without thinking. Then she went to the drawing-room and drew the curtains and sat down by the fire. “Suppose I should have to go out,” she thought. “Suppose he wouldn’t look at me. Suppose he doesn’t care for old times after all.” She was still sitting there when Lady Varens came in. “I thought there was no wind this afternoon,” she remarked, “but there is something; I think it must be suction, because there is not a twig stirring, but my hat was drawn off my head and my eyes are full of sand. Have you been out?”
“Only to the letter box,” said Evangeline. “I wrote to Evan and raced out to post it before I had time to think.”
“What made you do that?” Lady Varens asked.
“David,” she answered. “He kept repeating that there was no difficulty. If anyone goes on saying a thing often enough I begin to believe it, and he went on and on.”
“But I don’t understand yet,” Lady Varens said. “What sort of a letter was it?”
“Just a nice letter. There are a great many things that he may have forgotten. I haven’t. It was all right, you know, once.”
“David thinks Evan might leave the army,” she went on presently. “I shouldn’t have to go out then—unless he won’t answer.”
“What would he do if he left?” asked Lady Varens.
“I don’t know, but David seemed to have some idea in his mind.”
“Then I expect if he seemed to, he had. If he goes after a fox there generally is one.”