From One Generation to Another | Page 9

tongue. For she was conscious all the while of her own
inability to harm him. Without defining the thought, her common-sense
taught her one lamentable, unjust fact; namely, that unless a woman is
loved by the object of her wrath she can hardly make him suffer.
She rose at last, and, lighting the candles on the writing-table, she
proceeded to write to Seymour Michael. Even in this epistle the natural
cunning of her nature appeared.
"DEAR SEYMOUR "--she wrote on a sheet of paper bearing the
address of the house in which she was staying, the roof under which
Seymour Michael had first paid his careless tribute to her wealth--"I
learnt by accident this evening that your regiment has returned to
England. If you are in London, I hope you will make time to come and

see me. Come to-morrow evening at four, if that time is convenient to
you. ANNA."
She purposely signed her Christian name only, purposely refrained
from vouchsafing any personal news. She did not know how much or
how little he might know.
Ringing for her maid, she sent the letter to the post, addressed to
Seymour Michael, at the Service Club, of which she knew him to be a
member. Then she went to bed to toss and turn all night. The doctors,
good, portly Clapham practitioners, had warned her in the usual way to
spare herself all bodily fatigue and mental worry for the sake of the
little one. It is so easy to urge each other to spare all mental worry, and
so eminently useful.

CHAPTER IV
FREIGHTED
I shall remember while the light lives yet, And in the darkness I shall
not forget.
Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard
knocks were to be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect
and unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.
He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at
his club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired
surname only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.
That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not
yet his that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.

Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would
allow. She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when
Seymour Michael was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was
his diminutiveness. After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually
carried mud into the Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed
dapper soldier of fortune looked almost puny. But there is a depth in
every woman's heart which is only to be reached by one man. Whatever
betide them both, that one is different from the rest all through life.
Neither of these two persons spoke until the servant had closed the door.
Then, as is usual in such cases, the more indifferent spoke first.
"Why did you never write to me?" said Seymour Michael, fixing his
mournful glance on her face.
"Because I thought you were dead."
"You never got my letter contradicting the report?"
"No," she answered, with so cheap a cunning that it deceived him.
"And," he went on, with the heartlessness of a small man, for large men
respect woman with a deeper chivalry than every puny knight yet
compassed, "and you did not trouble to inquire. You did not even give
me six months' grace to cool in my grave."
"How did you send your letter?" she asked, with a suppressed
excitement which he misread entirely.
"By the usual route. I wrote off at once."
"Liar! liar! liar!" she shrieked.
She had risen, and stood pointing an accusatory finger at him. Then
suddenly the dramatic force of the situation seemed to fail, and she
burst out laughing. For some seconds it seemed as if her laughter was
getting beyond her control, but at last she checked it with a gurgle.

The complete success of the trap which she had laid for him almost
disappointed her. Few things are more disappointing than complete
success. She hated him, and yet for the sake of the one gleam of good
love that had flickered once in her essentially sordid heart, she had
nourished a vague hope that he would clear himself--that at all events
he would have the cleverness to see through her stratagem.
"Liar!" she repeated. "In this room last night--not twenty-four hours