“Don’t blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock,” cried she, gayly, exasperatingly confident that I was as delighted with her as she was with herself. “I told him you were expecting me and didn’t give him a chance to stop me.”
I assumed she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for revenging her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and courteous, but I felt that my face was darkening—her very presence forced forward things I had been keeping in the far background of my mind. “How can I be of service to you, madam?” said I.
“I bring you good news,” she replied—and I noted that she no longer looked haggard and wretched, that her beauty was once more smiling with a certain girlishness, like a young widow’s when she finds her consolation. “Mowbray and I have made it up,” she explained.
I simply listened, probably looking as grim as I felt.
“I knew you would be interested,” she went on. “Indeed, it means almost as much to you as to me. It brings peace to two families.”
Still I did not relax.
“And so,” she continued, a little uneasy, “I came to you immediately.”
I continued to listen as if I were waiting for her to finish and depart.
“If you want, I’ll go to Anita.” Natural feminine tact would have saved her from this rawness; but, convinced that she was a “great lady” by the flattery of servants and shopkeepers and sensational newspapers and social climbers, she had long since discarded tact as worthy only of the lowly and of the aspiring before they “arrive.”
“You are too kind,” said I. “Mrs. Blacklock and I feel competent to take care of our own affairs.”