“Yes—well. Well, I don't know quite why I'm keeping you here—though there was something I wanted to say to you, I believe—in a most serious and grandmotherly manner too—the way of a grown woman as Sargent would put it—poor Sargent—” She laughed.
“Oh yes, I remember now. It was only that I don't think you need—worry—about Mr. Billett any more. You see?”
“I think so,” said Oliver with some incomprehension.
“Seeing him done up that way in towels,” she mused with a flicker of mirth. “And the way he looked at me when I was telling about things afterwards—oh it wouldn't do, you know, Oliver, it wouldn't do! Your friend is—essentially—a—highly—Puritan—young man,” she added slowly. Oliver started—that was one of the things so few people knew about Ted.
“Oh yes—wholly. Even in the way he'd go to the devil. He'd do it with such a religious conviction—take it so hard. It would eat him up. Completely. And it isn't—amusing—to go to the devil with anybody whose diabolism would be so efficiently pious—a reversed kind of Presbyterianism. We wouldn't do that, you know—you or myself,” and for an instant as she spoke Oliver felt what he characterized as a most damnable feeling of kinship with her.
It was true. Oliver had been struck with that during his army experiences—things somehow had never seemed to stick to him the way they had seemed to with Ted.
“Which is one reason that I feel so sure Mr. Billett will get on very well with Sargent's daughter—if his Puritan principles don't make him feel too much as if he were linking her for life to a lost soul,” went on Mrs. Severance.
“Wha-a-at!”
“My dear Oliver, whatever my failings may be, I have some penetration. Mr. Billett was garrulous at times, I fear—young men are so apt to be with older women. Oh no—he was beautifully sure that he was not betraying himself—the dear ostrich. And that letter—really that was clumsy of both of you, Oliver—when I could see the handwriting—all modern and well-bred girls seem to write the same curly kind of hand somehow—and then Sargent's address in embossed blue letters on the back. And I couldn't have suspected him of carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. Piper!” and Oliver was forced to smile at her tinkle of laughter. Then she grew a little earnest.
“I don't suppose it was—Mr. Billett—I wanted so—exactly,” she mused. “It was more—Mr. Billett's age—Mr. Billett's undeniable freshness—if you see. I'm not quite a Kipling vampire—no—a vampire that wants to crunch the bones—or do vampires crunch bones? I believe they only act like babies with bottles—nasty of them, isn't it?—But one gets to a definite age—and Sargent's a dear but he has all the defects of a husband—and things begin slipping away, slipping away—”