"But screen her from whom? No one knows except Janet, and Janet is dead. Perhaps that woman with a face like a horse knows; that would be awkward for Victoria if she were to offend her, for a more damned unforgiving countenance I never set eyes upon. But Janet was faithful; I am sure Janet would not split even when she was dying. And then there was very little to split about when she died. Victoria hadn't married Mr. Cassilis.
"What the deuce does she want to rake up old things for? Why can't she let things be? It's the way of women. They can't forget; and hang me if I don't think she can't forgive me because she has done me a wrong! Why did I come back from Empire City! There, at all events, one could be safe from annoyance.
"On a day like this, too, the first really fine day of the season; and it's spoiled. I might have dined with cousin Agatha and talked to Phillis—the pretty little Phillis! I might have mooned away the afternoon in the Park and dined at the Club. I might have gone to half-a-dozen places in the evening. I might have gone to Greenwich and renewed my youth at the Ship. I might have gone to Richmond with old Evergreen and his party. But Phillis for choice. But now I must have it out with Victoria Cassilis. There's a fate in it: We can't be allowed to rest and be happy. Like the schoolboy's scrag-end of the rolly-polly pudding, it is helped, and must be eaten."
Philosophy brings resignation, but it does not bring ease of mind. Those unfortunate gentlemen who used to be laid upon the wheel and have their limbs broken might have contemplated the approach of inevitable suffering with resignation, but never with happiness. In Colquhoun's mind, Victoria Cassilis was associated with a disagreeable and painful chapter in his life. He saw her marriage in the fragment of Ladds's paper, and thought the chapter closed. He came home and found her waiting for him ready to open it again.
"I did think," he said, turning over her letter in his fingers, "that for her own sake, she would have let things be forgotten. It's ruin for her if the truth comes out, and not pleasant for me, A pretty fool I should look explaining matters in a witness-box. But I must see her, if only to bring her to reason. Reason? When was a woman reasonable?"
"I am here," he said, standing before Mrs. Cassilis at her own house a few hours later. "I am here."
Athos, Parthos, Arimis, and D'Artagnan would have said exactly the same thing.
"Me voici!"
And they would have folded their arms and thrown back their heads with a preliminary tap at the sword-hilt, to make sure that the trusty blade was loose in the scabbard and easy to draw, in case M. le Mari—whom the old French allegorists called Danger—should suddenly appear.
But Lawrence Colquhoun said it quite meekly, to a woman who neither held out her hand nor rose to meet him, nor looked him in the face, but sat in her chair with bowed head and weeping eyes.