“I stopped. It was getting so dull in that part of the paper,” she said, confusedly, bent on herself getting the gist of a certain paragraph that had caught her eye.
It was an account of an archæological meeting that had recently been held in Newcastle, where Mr. Mortimer Elles had seconded the motion of somebody or other, and had “given an exceedingly humorous turn” to the debate.
She pored over it with a certain sense of bitterness, mingled with relief.
“So he is cheerful enough to make bad jokes! He is getting on all right. I need not have troubled to be anxious! He will have told all my friends and his that his gadding fool of a wife is away amusing herself on a visit. He is quite clever enough to invent some excuse like that! Men don’t care to admit that they have been run away from!”
Mr. Rivers had meanwhile idly taken up the few letters she had brought and laid down beside him as usual, ready to his hand. He was quite capable of leaving them for hours unopened, to her continual surprise and somewhat to her annoyance. She could not understand dilatoriness in such matters. But he was reading one now, of which the immense signature inevitably caught her eye. It was Egidia’s real name—Alice Giles—which she happened to know.
“I—had a few letters this morning,” she remarked, pointedly, “but they were all very dull.”
“This one of mine is rather amusing,” returned the guileless artist. “It is from my cousin—I daresay you know her by the name she writes under—‘Egidia.’”
“Why, I told you I did when I first came here!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you remember? It is through Egidia that we know each other. And is that from her? Oh, do, if you can, read me some of it.”
Rivers tossed the letter into her lap.
“Read it all, if you like. It is a lively account of her Northern experiences. There seem to be some odd types in Newcastle, to judge by what she says!”