Part 12

“Well, Miss Tita,” I said, “it’s just what I should like you to prevent.”

“How can I prevent it?”

“Couldn’t you get them away from her?”

“And give them to you?”

This put the case very crudely, though I am sure there was no irony in her intention. “Oh, I mean that you might let me see them and look them over. It isn’t for myself; there is no personal avidity in my desire. It is simply that they would be of such immense interest to the public, such immeasurable importance as a contribution to Jeffrey Aspern’s history.”

She listened to me in her usual manner, as if my speech were full of reference to things she had never heard of, and I felt particularly like the reporter of a newspaper who forces his way into a house of mourning. This was especially the case when after a moment she said. “There was a gentleman who some time ago wrote to her in very much those words. He also wanted her papers.”

“And did she answer him?” I asked, rather ashamed of myself for not having her rectitude.

“Only when he had written two or three times. He made her very angry.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said he was a devil,” Miss Tita replied simply.

“She used that expression in her letter?”

“Oh, no; she said it to me. She made me write to him.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him there were no papers at all.”

“Ah, poor gentleman!” I exclaimed.

“I knew there were, but I wrote what she bade me.”

“Of course you had to do that. But I hope I shall not pass for a devil.”

“It will depend upon what you ask me to do for you,” said Miss Tita, smiling.

“Oh, if there is a chance of YOUR thinking so my affair is in a bad way! I shan’t ask you to steal for me, nor even to fib--for you can’t fib, unless on paper. But the principal thing is this--to prevent her from destroying the papers.”

“Why, I have no control of her,” said Miss Tita. “It’s she who controls me.”

“But she doesn’t control her own arms and legs, does she? The way she would naturally destroy her letters would be to burn them. Now she can’t burn them without fire, and she can’t get fire unless you give it to her.”

“I have always done everything she has asked,” my companion rejoined. “Besides, there’s Olimpia.”

I was on the point of saying that Olimpia was probably corruptible, but I thought it best not to sound that note. So I simply inquired if that faithful domestic could not be managed.

“Everyone can be managed by my aunt,” said Miss Tita. And then she observed that her holiday was over; she must go home.

I laid my hand on her arm, across the table, to stay her a moment. “What I want of you is a general promise to help me.”

“Oh, how can I--how can I?” she asked, wondering and troubled. She was half-surprised, half-frightened at my wishing to make her play an active part.

“This is the main thing: to watch her carefully and warn me in time, before she commits that horrible sacrilege.”

“I can’t watch her when she makes me go out.”