“You mustn’t let yourself worry about it,” said Horace kindly, “or I shall be sorry I’ve told you. Honestly, I don’t think it will become a serious matter. There’s the evening post. I rather imagine that extremely fancy envelope may be from the lady herself. My correspondents are usually less stimulating in their notepaper.”
He read it, frowned in a puzzled way, and tossed it over to Edith. It ran:
My Dear Sir,--Thank you for your simple, explicit statement of the case. You gave me a great deal of amusement, and no pain. I wish your son had copied your style. I daresay he has told you that he meant to marry me; but though an imaginative child, I don’t suppose he can ever have said to you that I meant to marry him. I don’t make promises, and unless any unforeseen circumstance should arise, I am not likely to undertake the experiment. As to my moral influence (which I notice you have done me the honor not to mention), I have always made it my invariable rule to leave boys alone. I laugh at them, but I do not hurt them.
Yours sincerely,
Anastasia Falaise.
“Well, what do you make of that, my dear?” said Horace Lestrange, feeling after his matches. “Seems to let us out, doesn’t it?”
Edith let the paper fall into her lap and looked into the fire.
“Poor woman!” she said very gently. “Do you know, Horace, she reminds me just a little of Helen of Troy. Helen used to talk like that, as if the soul had been eaten out of her words. I think a woman must be very unhappy to write like that.”
“It is time you went to bed, Edith; you look tired,” said her husband. “Just throw that letter on the fire, will you?”
She threw the letter on to the fire and watched it burn.