“Yes, Cynthia,” said Eve. The inconvenient Mrs. McTodd possessed a Christian name admirably adapted for being hissed between clenched teeth, and Eve hissed it in this fashion now. It became evident to Psmith that the dear girl was in a condition of hardly suppressed fury and that trouble was coming his way. He braced himself to meet it.
“Directly after we had that talk on the lake, the day I arrived,” continued Eve tersely, “I wrote to Cynthia, telling her to come here at once and meet me at the ‘Emsworth Arms’ . . .”
“In the High Street,” said Psmith. “I know it. Good beer.”
“What!”
“I said they sell good beer . . .”
“Never mind about the beer,” cried Eve.
“No, no. I merely mentioned it in passing.”
“At lunch to-day I got a letter from her saying that she would be there this afternoon. So I hurried off. I wanted——” Eve laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh of a calibre which even the Hon. Freddie Threepwood would have found beyond his powers, and he was a specialist—“I wanted to try to bring you two together. I thought that if I could see her and have a talk with her that you might become reconciled.”
Psmith, though obsessed with a disquieting feeling that he was fighting in the last ditch, pulled himself together sufficiently to pat her hand as it lay beside him on the wall like some white and fragile flower.
“That was like you,” he murmured. “That was an act worthy of your great heart. But I fear that the rift between Cynthia and myself has reached such dimensions . . .”