From One Generation to Another | Page 9

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 ago--Mr. Wynderton told me all about it. He said that you told several men in his presence that you did not love me, and that your death reported in the papers was the best way of breaking off the engagement."
Seymour Michael's eyes never wavered. For once they were still, with that solemn depth of gaze which tells of the curse laid on a smitten, miserable race. It was strange that before honest men and women his glance wavered ever--he could never meet honest eyes; but looking at Anna Agar they were as steady as those of a true man.
"Wynderton," ho said, "the man whose promotion I stopped, by a report against him for looting."
When Nature makes a fool in the guise of a woman she turns out a finished work. Mrs. Agar's eyes actually lighted up. Seymour Michael saw; but he knew that he had no case. Nevertheless, in view of the Squire's advanced age (a fact of which he had made sure), he attempted to carry through a forlorn hope.
"And you believe this man before you believe me?" said Michael. It is strange how often one hears the word "believe" on the lips of those whose veracity