"Don't be too sure about all this,"I told myself cautiously.But there are times when cautioning one's self is quite as useless as if somebody else had cautioned one;my reason leaped with the rapidity of intuition;I merely sat and looked on at what it was doing.All sorts of odds and ends,words I hadn't understood,looks and silences I hadn't interpreted,little signs that I had thought nothing of at first,but which I had gradually,through their multiplicity,come to know meant something,all these broken pieces fitted into each other now,fell together and made a clear pattern of the truth,without a crack in it--Hortense had never believed in that story about the phosphates having failed--"pinched out,"as they say of ore deposits.There she had stood between her two suitors,between her affianced John and the besieging Charley,and before she would be off with the old love and on with the new,she must personally look into those phosphates.Therefore she had been obliged to have a sick father and postpone the wedding two or three times,because her affairs--very likely the necessity of making certain of Charley--had prevented her from coming sooner to Kings Port.And having now come hither,and having beheld her Northern and her Southern lovers side by side--had the comparison done something to her highly controlled heart?Was love taking some hitherto unknown liberties with that well-balanced organ?But what an outrage had been perpetrated upon John!At that my deductions staggered in their rapid course.How could his aunts--but then it had only been one of them;Miss Josephine had never approved of Miss Eliza's course;it was of that that Mrs.Weguelin St.Michael had so emphatically reminded Mrs.Gregory in my presence when we had strolled together upon High Walk,and those two ladies had talked oracles in my presence.Well,they were oracles no longer!
When the boat brought us back to the wharf,there were the rest of my flowers unbestowed,and upon whom should I bestow them?I thought first of Eliza La Heu,but she wouldn't be at the Exchange so late as this.
Then it seemed well to carry them to Mrs.Weguelin.Something,however,prompted me to pass her door,and continue vaguely walking on until Icame to the house where Miss Josephine and Miss Eliza lived;and here Irang the bell and was admitted.
They were sitting as I had seen them first,the one with her embroidery,and the other on the further side of a table,whereon lay an open letter,which in a few moments I knew must have been the subject of the discussion which they finished even as I came forward.
"It was only prolonging an honest mistake."That was Miss Eliza.
"And it has merely resulted in clinching what you meant it to finish."That was Miss Josephine.
I laid my flowers upon the table,and saw that the letter was in John Mayrant's hand.Of course.
I avoided looking at it again;but what had he written,and why had he written?His daily steps turned to this house--unless Miss Josephine had banished him again.
The ladies accepted my offering with gracious expressions,and while Itold them of my visit to Live Oaks,and poured out my enthusiasm,the servant was sent for and brought water and two beautiful old china bowls,in which Miss Eliza proceeded to arrange the flowers with her delicate white hands.She made them look exquisite with an old lady's art,and this little occupation went on as we talked of indifferent subjects.
But the atmosphere of that room was charged with the subject of which we did not speak.The letter lay on the table;and even as I struggled to sustain polite conversation,I began to know what was in it,though Inever looked at it again;it spoke out as clearly to me as the launch had done.I had thought,when I first entered,to tell the ladies something of my meeting with Hortense Rieppe;I can only say that I found this impossible.Neither of them referred to her,or to John,or to anything that approached what we were all thinking of;for me to do so would have assumed the dimensions of a liberty;and in consequence of this state of things,constraint sat upon us all,growing worse,and so pervading our small-talk with discomfort that I made my visit a very short one.Of course they were civil about this when I rose,and begged me not to go so soon;but I knew better.And even as I was getting my hat and gloves in the hall I could tell by their tones that they had returned to the subject of that letter.But in truth they had never left it;as the front door shut behind me I felt as if they had read it aloud to me.
