“After all, there is no harm done,” she said. “I see no objection to Moore’s going with them, and we can easily make some little excuse for you, Regina, if it is necessary. To begin with, there would not be room for so many in the carriage.”
“Oh, yes, there would,” said Moore, dejectedly. “They’re going to have a much bigger one, which holds five inside and one on the box—or even two—by the driver. And the girl looked so pleased when I said you’d come. I shall feel as ashamed as anything if you don’t; I know that, Reggie.”
I had not the heart to tell him it was his own fault, and mother just said to him that he might trust her to put it all right. So in a minute or two he brightened up again, and it seemed as if the matter were at an end.
It was not so, however. When a thing is to be, it often seems as if even the most trivial events conspire to lead up to it. So it was in this case.
At supper that evening Moore turned his chair, so that he—or at least his face—should not be visible by his new acquaintances. I was sorry for him; he was feeling rather “small” and mortified, I could see, and I wished I had not snubbed his boyish officiousness so unmercifully. I had almost arrived at the point of hoping that some occasion would offer itself for endorsing his friendly overtures, when my glance fell on an envelope lying—hitherto unnoticed—by my plate, and I realised by a flash of inspiration that here in my hands was the very opportunity I had been thinking of.
It was a letter addressed to—
“James Wynyard, Esq., Hotel Augusta, Weissbad, etc, etc.”
I felt certain it was for one of the two men at the neighbouring table, and almost certain, though I had no grounds for being so, that it was for the elder, the father of the two young women. And even if I were mistaken, its having been deposited on our table gave an excellent excuse for speaking to them. Letters, as a rule, came in the morning—English letters, that is to say—but there was a second post late in the evening, and anything it brought was laid on the supper-tables. I touched mother’s arm and showed her the address, saying in a low voice, “Shall I ask if it is for them?” when to my surprise she started. “Wynyard?” she said, “James Wynyard! Why, that was the name of Maud Prideaux’s husband. How curious if—if it should be—”
She glanced up. Her face was aglow with excitement, as had been Moore’s. But before she finished her sentence, I saw a look of new expectancy in her eyes, and turning in the same direction, I caught sight of “the father,” as we called him, coming towards us, a letter in his hand also, and a look of inquiry and surprise in his face.
“I think,” he was beginning, as he reached our table. But mother cut him short.