She tore the letter across and threw it into the fire. Then she came over to him and did what he wanted with a jealous eagerness that was new.
"Was it a worrying letter?" he said, in a low voice. He had nothing to do but look at her.
"No," she said, "it didn't worry me." But her tone was subdued, too quiet, as if she had had a shock.
"I'm eternally grateful to you for burning it, though," he said; "that abominable scent it reeked with was like a whiff of nightmare. I seem to remember it. I wonder where I can have run across a woman who advertised herself like that.... I'm glad you burnt it. Considerate nurse. It was the only thing to do."
She was grateful to him for not insisting. Not yet, not yet; not just this morning! ... Afterwards she would tell him.... She moved away from his side and picked up a newspaper from the pile that lay with the letters.
"Do you know what you look like?" said Lady Henrietta, tapping her cheek. "Like a child that has been startled, like a child when an unkind shake has scattered its house of cards."
It was true. But such a tottering house, such a dream-built, precarious house of cards!—
Lady Henrietta dropped her voice, ostensibly to communicate a paragraph in the aunt's letter that was unsuited to the profane masculine understanding.
"I don't want to pry," she said; "but was that by any chance an anonymous letter?"
"Oh, no, no, it was not," said Susan.