But, though this conversation had taken place some months ago, and though Mr. Tapster still held true to his generous resolve, as yet Flossy had not reappeared. Mr. Tapster sometimes told himself that if he only knew where she was, what she was doing,—whether she was still with that young fellow, for instance,—he would think much less about her than he did now. Only last night, going for a moment into the night nursery,—poor Mr. Tapster now enjoyed his children's company only when he was quite sure that they were asleep,—he had had an extraordinary, almost a physical impression of Flossy's presence; he certainly had felt a faint whiff of her favorite perfume. Flossy had been fond of scent, and, though Maud always said that the use of scent was most unladylike, he, James, did not dislike it.
With sudden soreness, Mr. Tapster now recalled the one letter Flossy had written to him just before the actual hearing of the divorce suit. It had been a wild, oddly worded appeal to him to take her back, not—as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter—because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter as shameless and unwomanly in the extreme, and even William, who had never judged his pretty young sister-in-law as severely as his wife had always done, had observed sadly that Flossy seemed quite unaware of the magnitude of her offense against God and man.
Mr. Tapster, who prided himself on his sharp ears, suddenly heard a curious little sound. He knew it for that of the front door being first opened, and then shut again, extremely quietly. He half rose from his chair by the fire, then sat down again heavily.
By Maud's advice, he always locked the area gate himself when he came home each evening. But how foolish of Maud—such a sensible woman, too—to think that servants and their evil ways could be circumvented so easily. Of course, the maids went in and out by the front door in the evening, and the policeman—a most respectable officer standing at point duty a few yards lower down the road—must be well aware of these disgraceful "goings on".
For the first two or three months of his widowerhood (how else could he term his present peculiar wifeless condition?) there had been a constant coming and going of servants, first chosen, and then dismissed, by Maud. At last she suggested that her brother-in-law should engage a lady housekeeper, and the luckless James Tapster had even interviewed several applicants for the post after they had been chosen—sifted out, as it were—by Maud. Unfortunately, they had all been more or less of his own age, and plain, very plain; while he, naturally enough, would have preferred to see something young and pretty about him again.
It was over this housekeeper question that he had at last escaped from Maud's domestic thraldom; for his sister-in-law, offended by his rejection of each of her candidates, had declared that she would take no more trouble about his household affairs! Nay, more, she had reminded him with a smile that she had honestly tried to make pleasant, that there is, after all, no fool like an old fool—about women. This insinuation had made Mr. Tapster very angry, and straightway he had engaged a respectable cook-housekeeper, and, although he had soon become aware that the woman was feathering her own nest,—James Tapster, as you will have divined ere now, was fond of good workaday phrases,—yet she had a pleasant, respectful manner, and kept rough order among the younger servants.
Mr. Tapster's sister-in-law now interfered only where his children were concerned. Never having been herself a mother, she had, of course, been able to form a clear and unprejudiced judgment as to how children, and especially as to how little boys, should be physically and mentally trained. As yet, however, Maud had not been very successful with her two nephews and infant niece, but this was doubtless owing to the fact that there had been something gravely amiss with each of the five nurses who had been successively engaged by her during the last year.
The elder of Mr. Tapster's sons was six, and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named, unfortunately, Flora, after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day. All this being so, was it not strange that a young matron who had led, for some four years out of the eight years her married life had lasted, so wholly womanly and
domestic an existence as had fallen to the lot of Flossy, should have been led astray by the meretricious allurements of unlawful love?—Maud's striking thought and phrase, this.