"Miss Simpson, Mr. Marson, it's true—what I said that night.
It's a fact!"
Ashe regarded the intruder with a malevolent eye. Never fond of Mr. Judson, he looked on him now with positive loathing. It had not been easy for him to work himself up to the point where he could discuss with Joan the mysterious ways of Providence, for there was that about her which made it hard to achieve sentiment. That indefinable something in Joan Valentine which made for nocturnal raids on other people's museums also rendered her a somewhat difficult person to talk to about twin souls and destiny. The qualities that Ashe loved in her—her strength, her capability, her valiant self-sufficingness—were the very qualities which seemed to check him when he tried to tell her that he loved them.
Mr. Judson was still babbling.
"It's true. There ain't a doubt of it now. It's been and happened just as I said that night."
"What did you say? Which night?" inquired Ashe.
"That night at dinner—the first night you two came here. Don't you remember me talking about Freddie and the girl he used to write letters to in London—the girl I said was so like you, Miss Simpson? What was her name again? Joan Valentine. That was it. The girl at the theater that Freddie used to send me with letters to pretty nearly every evening. Well, she's been and done it, same as I told you all that night she was jolly likely to go and do. She's sticking young Freddie up for his letters, just as he ought to have known she would do if he hadn't been a young fathead. They're all alike, these girls—every one of them."
Mr. Judson paused, subjected the surrounding scenery to a cautious scrutiny and resumed.
"I took a suit of Freddie's clothes away to brush just now; and happening"—Mr. Judson paused and gave a little cough—"happening to glance at the contents of his pockets I come across a letter. I took a sort of look at it before setting it aside, and it was from a fellow named Jones; and it said that this girl, Valentine, was sticking onto young Freddie's letters what he'd written her, and would see him blowed if she parted with them under another thousand. And, as I made it out, Freddie had already given her five hundred.
"Where he got it is more than I can understand; but that's what the letter said. This fellow Jones said he had passed it to her with his own hands; but she wasn't satisfied, and if she didn't get the other thousand she was going to bring an action for breach. And now Freddie has given me a note to take to this Jones, who is stopping in Market Blandings."
Joan had listened to this remarkable speech with a stunned amazement. At this point she made her first comment: