Part 27 (1/2)
”And that's why you are suddenly so curious about Frank?”
He regarded her in injured silence; but instead of appearing affected by his unspoken reproach, she continued with an air of knowing both his intentions and her own.
”If father wanted you to know he would have told you himself.”
”It is for his own sake I want to find out.”
”Then you admit you were trying to find out about father! What benefit would it be to him if you knew?”
”It is most inconvenient at the office not knowing his address.”
”If it really were very inconvenient, father would be certain to think of that and send you his address himself.”
”He has not thought of it.”
”Well then, there can't be any great inconvenience.”
Not for the first time in his life Andrew wished that all humanity belonged to his own sensible, candid, trustworthy s.e.x.
”I tell you there is,” he insisted.
”I trust father implicitly,” she replied.
”Oh, you think his recent behavior has been the kind of thing to inspire confidence?”
”It has in me!” she answered enthusiastically.
”You have a high opinion of his sense,” he sneered.
”A great deal higher than I have of anybody else's in the world--in Edinburgh, anyhow!” she retorted, and with her chin held high broke off the conference.
This was sufficiently exasperating, but it was not the worst that treacherous s.e.x could do. The widow's demeanor was a hundred times more menacing. She was so motherly towards Jean, so sisterly towards his unfortunate aunt, so skittishly condescending towards himself, that his previous suspicions of her were suns.h.i.+ny compared with the dark convictions that lay heavier upon him each day. Her black eyes danced mockingly whenever he looked into them; she seemed always to be hugging the most delicious secret. Andrew doubted she had hugged more than a secret in this house.
It was a further confirmation of her perfidy that ever since his father's flight she had made a point of being down to breakfast before him, so that he could never see what letters she received. That was d.a.m.ning evidence against her--d.a.m.nable evidence, in fact, for it argued a degree both of intelligence and energy for which he had not given her credit. Like his father before him, he was discovering that there was more up this sparkling lady's sleeve than met the eye.
A few mornings after the disappearance he thought he had caught her.
When he entered the room she was reading a letter. He snapped up the chance instantly.
”Is that my father's writing?” he inquired, dissimulating his acuteness under an easy conversational air.
”It's a little like it,” she replied, with an amiable smile, slipping the letter into its envelop and turning that face downwards on the table.
The W.S. began to respect as much as he detested her. All through breakfast she rippled with the happiest smiles and the gayest conversation. At the end, his detestation had again got its head in front of his respect.
But the following morning he himself received a letter which threw the widow and her smiles so completely into the background that for the next forty-eight hours he was scarcely aware of her existence. It ran thus:
250 BURY STREET, ST. JAMES', S.W.