My dearest mamma, you see I am making a clean breast of everything to you. I own, quite candidly, that since I have been here I have not behaved precisely as I might have done, and, indeed, ought to have done. I do not know how it is, I meant to be good; I am sure that nothing could have been better than my resolutions. I had no idea that they could have been so easily broken. It only shows, after all, how fragile we are. I felt that, strange and sad though it seems, Lily was not wholly unjust. I got up from my chair, and I knelt at her feet, and I pillowed my head in her lap and I cried:
"Oh, Lily, I've been so wicked! You can't think how sorry I am, now that it's too late. I wish you'd help me, and tell me what I ought to do."
"I'm a bit of a dab at a cry myself," she said. "So, if you take my advice, to begin with, you'll literally dry up."
Was it not unkind? And was it not vulgar? But I sometimes think that Lily's heart is like the nether millstone--so hard, you know. She went on:
"If you do mean business with Charlie, and you do want my advice, you'll just tell him everything you have been doing, and leave the solution of the situation to him."
I made up my mind there and then that that was exactly what I would do. I resolved that I would have no secrets from my husband--particularly as he would be sure to be told them by unfriendly lips if he did not learn them from mine. Besides, in such matters, a man is so much more generous, and so much more sympathetic than a woman--especially the man. Nor does he value you any the less because he finds that someone else happens to value you a little too.
So, directly Lily had gone I let my hair down, and I put on my light blue dressing-jacket and a touch of powder, and I waited. Presently I heard steps coming along the passage. I opened the door. Sure enough it was Charlie, just going to bed. At sight of me he started. I was conscious that I was, perhaps, acting with some imprudence. But I could not help it. My entire happiness was at stake. You know, dear mamma, that I do look nice in that pretty dressing-jacket, with my hair, not at all untidy, but simply let down. You yourself have told me that, in every sense of the word, I look so young. He held out his hands to me--under a misapprehension. I shrank back.
"Mr. Mason," I began very softly, with, in my voice, a sort of sob, "I could not rest until I had told you all that has passed between us to-night must be considered as unsaid."
He started as if I had struck him. I could see that his face went white.
"Miss Whitby! May! What do you mean?" He seemed to gasp for breath. "After all, it is only natural that you should not love a great hulking idiot such as I am."