At the thought of the scrap of paper, I was out of bed again in half a twinkling, nearly wide awake. Where was it? I re-lit the gas, looked for it, found it still among the litter on the dressing-table. There was the mystic, magic, incredible sentence, in the small clear writing, which somehow reminded me of the writing in which they put one’s name upon one’s visiting-card.
“Your wish shall be gratified until——”
“Until?”
Why, surely, when I saw it last no “until” was there. It certainly was not when I saw it first. Was the sentence really still being written? Then the scribe was pretty slow. If such were the case what was to follow after “until”?
“Until”—satiety ensued, and I had had enough of it? Could I turn off my power at pleasure, and, having done so, turn it on again? How? Would the secret of that somewhat delicate operation also be revealed? “Until”—I was married? I might be married in a few hours, if I chose, to the Duke of Chelmsford, that deliciously impertinent brown man. Should I not be able to crow over mamma and the girls if I were? Would it not be a magnificent instance of Cinderella up-to-date? Though no one could speak of the girls as “ugly sisters.” “Until”—I was old? Some people might regard twenty-two as old. I myself sometimes feel as if bowed down by the weight of years. What was the period in life at which it was universally agreed that folks were old, even by the folks themselves? I knew that mamma considered herself quite young. If it were left to me to fix the age at which I might be reckoned old, I might say after the expiration of a century, and, even from the little I had seen of things, I believe that some people esteemed themselves comparatively juvenile even then. Fancy men of all ranks and ages making love to a real old lady! Would it not be dreadful? “Until”—I died? I was not sure that I should like to be regarded as an object of desire by every male creature I encountered, quite until the end. I might have had a great deal more than enough of them long ere that. Especially if they continued to press themselves upon me as eagerly as they had done that night. Indeed, it was extremely probable, if only death could put a period to their persecution, that I might welcome with rapture a suicide’s grave.
I put out the gas again, and, with the scrap of paper between my fingers, returned to bed, the problem of the unfinished sentence yet unsolved. And I have a vague idea that I fell fast asleep as soon as I was between the sheets a second time—the missing words still missing.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE FINISHED SENTENCE
For some moments I could not think what had happened. I had just been eloping with the Duke of Chelmsford, and because several men had maintained that he ought to do nothing of the kind, he had put me in his pocket—which was not anything like large enough—and thrown Jane’s crimson shoes into his sister’s face, who had thereupon changed into a horse—with Walter Hammond’s head, on which he had sprung; and, galloping down the racecourse, had dragged me from his pocket—with much difficulty!—and married me in the middle of the grand stand. I felt, even in my sleep, that this was a surprising way for a person to behave, and that I had a grievance, when all at once I became conscious of Audrey’s face bent over my bed, and of the fact that she was shaking me.
“Do you know what time it is?” I did not, and did not care. I fancy I signified as much. “It’s half-past eleven, and already people have come to see you.” Still I was indifferent: as yet the statement conveyed no meaning. “How are you feeling?”
“Cheap.”