“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you’d find out quite soon enough; and really, Emily, you’re such a fool you would probably have only made things worse.”
Mrs. Bassett was too much crushed to resent this plain speech.
“But you don’t know everything. I’ve found a lot of letters from women. It’s they who’ve led him astray. And d’you know whose are the worst?”
“Mrs. Castillyon’s?”
“Did you know that, too? Did everyone know my shame, and that my boy was being ruined, and did no one warn me? But I’m going to pay her out. I shall send every one to her husband. It’s she who’s done the mischief.”
She took from a drawer the bundle of letters, and excitedly gave them to Miss Ley.
“Is this all?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Miss Ley had with her a black satin bag, in which she kept her handkerchief and her purse, and swiftly opening it, she put the letters in.