“You—; you are Miss Harding! Miss Harding was you! Am I dreaming, or is this real life? How did you do it? Why did you do it? But your mouth is a different shape! This beats anything I ever knew! You used to look round-shouldered. Why? Why? Why? How could you be so mad?”
Then I made him sit down, and told him the whole story from the beginning; and, like every one else, he disapproved violently at first, and then, by slow degrees, came round to my own point of view. Like Bridget, he wanted to know why I couldn’t play fairy godmother to the “Mansions” with my own face; but when I asked him if I could have done so much for him, he acknowledged hastily that I could not. His expression, half horrified, half shy, spoke more eloquently than his words.
“No! you see it would not have worked. Old Miss Harding had a pull over Evelyn Wastneys. My name is Evelyn Wastneys, by the way, but that is a secret between us for the moment. And I am Charmion Fane’s friend, just as you are Edward Hallett’s, and the good, good God is going to give us the joy of seeing them happy together again. Mr Thorold! they have both been to blame, they have both had a share in spoiling their own lives—we won’t give them another chance! You and I, as staid, level-headed outsiders, are going to stage-manage their reconciliation.”
“How are we going to manage it?”
“Listen!” I said. “Listen!”
It’s a queer world. It’s a very queer world! People have said so before, but I wish to say it again, to shout it aloud at the pitch of my voice.
Hardly had I changed back into Miss Harding, and finished my evening meal, when a knock came to the door, and there entered Mrs Travers. Furious! She had returned from her day in the country; had seen her husband that afternoon; had heard from his lips what I had dared to think and to say! If she had been defending a homing dove, she could not have been more outraged, more aflame. She wished me to understand, once and for all, that for the future no communication, no acquaintance of any kind was possible between us. She would pass me by in the street without a glance.
Oh, very well!