Burn them, and continue her scheme of marriage?
Tell him, and withhold them until she got what she wanted?
Either choice had its drawbacks. She was conscious that both were what people would call discreditable. She endeavored to think of something which should not be discreditable, yet should be profitable.
Sitting up against her pillows with a pink plush dressing-jacket trimmed with swansdown on her shoulders, and her bright hair rolled closely round her head, she looked a charming, innocent, poetic picture in the warm and fragrant atmosphere of her chamber.
Painful emotions were odious to her; tragic events still more so; she liked her life to be all dressing and dining and flirting, doing theatres, leading cotillons, hunting with the best horses, laughing and being amused, the whole sprinkled intrigue and stimulated by exciting much passion and feeling a little.
But anything serious she detested, anything painful annoyed her.
She wished she had let the despatch-box alone. She was alarmed and discouraged. The papers were all which she had expected to find them, but she had not courage to use them. She was like a person who steals jewels and then is afraid to sell them, or pawn them, or wear them, for fear of inquiry. She cried a little from the wretched tension of her nerves and over-fatigue. She took a few drops of chloral and put the documents under her pillow and decided to try and go to sleep. Night brings counsel.
In the morning, after her bath and her coffee, things wore a different aspect. She did not see the old man’s dying stare, nor the boy’s reproachful sad eyes, any longer. She made up her mind suddenly; she said to her maid, “Pack up a day gown and an evening gown—I am going away for two days.” And said to Boo’s governess, “Take care of Lady Beatrix, and don’t let her get into mischief; and take care nobody lets her go to the Casino.”
She wrote a telegram to Wuffie at Cannes: “So thankful I came. I could soothe his dying hours, and persuaded him to a tardy repentance. I go to Paris on his errand. The consul is charged with his burial. Will explain on return.”
The consul’s name looked well, she thought, in this message.