“Would you forward it to Romayne?”
“Instantly! Does it matter whether these poor French people are worthy of his generosity? If it restores his tranquillity to help them, who cares whether they deserve the help? They are not even to know who it is that assists them—Romayne is to be their unknown friend. It is he, not they, whom we have to think of—his peace of mind is everything; their merit is nothing. I say it’s cruel to him to keep him in ignorance of what has happened. Why didn’t you take the letter away from Major Hynd?”
“Gently, Stella! The Major is going to make inquiries about the widow and children when he returns to London.”
“When he returns!” Stella repeated indignantly. “Who knows what the poor wretches may be suffering in the interval, and what Romayne may feel if he ever hears of it? Tell me the address again—it was somewhere in Islington, you said.”
“Why do you want to know it?” Lady Loring asked. “You are not going to write to Romayne yourself?”
“I am going to think, before I do anything. If you can’t trust my discretion, Adelaide, you have only to say so!”
It was spoken sharply. Lady Loring’s reply betrayed a certain loss of temper on her side. “Manage your own affairs, Stella—I have done meddling with them.” Her unlucky visit to Romayne at the hotel had been a subject of dispute between the two friends—and this referred to it. “You shall have the address,” my lady added in her grandest manner. She wrote it on a piece of paper, and left the room.
Easily irritated, Lady Loring had the merit of being easily appeased. That meanest of all vices, the vice of sulkiness, had no existence in her nature. In five minutes she regretted her little outburst of irritability. For five minutes more she waited, on the chance that Stella might be the first to seek a reconciliation. The interval passed, and nothing happened. “Have I really offended her?” Lady Loring asked herself. The next moment she was on her way back to Stella. The room was empty. She rang the bell for the maid.
“Where is Miss Eyrecourt?”
“Gone out, my lady.”