‘Who is this from?’ asked the latter as he took the note.
‘Don’t know, sir. I was told to give it you at once;’ and with that, exit the servant.
Oscar tore open the note, and not knowing the writing, the first thing he did was to look for the signature. But there was none. Then he took the note to the window to read.
Estelle, who had not stirred since the servant came in, watched him with quick-glancing, suspicious eyes.
‘He is surprised,’ she muttered to herself. ‘He cannot believe what he reads. He reads it for the second time—for the third! What can it be about? Who can it be from?’
For full five minutes Oscar Boyd stood facing the window without stirring or speaking; then he crushed the note between his fingers, put it into his pocket, and turned and confronted his wife. She was standing with one hand resting on the table, as she had been standing since the servant came in. His eyes traversed her face with a cold, critical, scrutinising glance that made her tremble in spite of herself. There was a strange mysterious change in his expression. What could it portend? He came a few steps nearer to her.
‘You tell me that you were saved from the wreck of the Ocean Bride. Why have you allowed all these years to elapse before making me aware of that fact?’
‘Because I knew that you no longer cared for me. Because I knew that the news of my death would be good news to you. Because I found friends who would not let me want.’
‘You used not to study my happiness so much.’
She gave a little shrug. ‘You never understood me—you never read me aright from the first.’