Mrs. Wingham listened to me attentively, laughing to herself and saying, “Dear! dear! so it might!” as she rubbed her knuckled old hands between her black silk knees. When I had done, I felt so vexed with myself I could have bitten my tongue out.
I rose, however, and, observing, “Of course, it is an idea and nothing else, and never will be realized,” bade her good-night and left the room, feeling uncommonly weak and foolish. She murmured, “Oh, of course!” as I closed the noisy glass door behind me and went up-stairs to bed.
A few minutes later, remembering I had left my book on the table where I had been writing to Lucy, I went down-stairs again to fetch it. Mrs. Wingham was still there, sitting at the table writing a letter. The envelope, already written, was lying close by my book, and I couldn’t help reading it.
It was positively addressed to “Jas. B. Thompson, Esq., 3 Aldrich Road Villas, Brixton Rise, S. E. London.”
I felt so faint I could scarcely get out of the room again and up the stairs.
But such is our insane confidence, where we ourselves and our own doings are concerned—such, at any rate, was mine in my lucky star—that I really felt no difficulty in persuading myself the whole thing was merely a coincidence, and that the writing of the letter had nothing whatever to do with either my or Teddy Parsons’s divulgations; more especially as the Bailey, on which Thompson evidently piqued himself, was omitted.
And I determined to say nothing about it to Brentin, partly because I didn’t care about being blackguarded by an American, and partly because I felt convinced it was all an accident, and nothing would come of it. Nor, in my generosity, did I do more to Teddy Parsons than temperately point out the folly he had been guilty of, and beg him to be more careful in future, which he very cheerfully promised, and for which magnanimity of mine he was, as I meant he should be, really uncommonly grateful.
CHAPTER XIV
ARRIVAL OF THE AMARANTH—ALL WELL ON BOARD—THEIR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE ROOMS
The next afternoon, soon after four, the Amaranth arrived in harbor.