Part 47

"I will tell him just how everything was, and he can judge. But what difference? It's all over, and I wouldn't help it if I could."

"Yes, I know that," said Charmian, "but that's all the more reason why you shouldn't go and say more than there is. He can't think, even if you're just to yourself, that you want to--wheedle."

"Wheedle!" cried Cornelia.

"Well, not wheedle, exactly, but what would be wheedling in some other girl--in me," said Charmian, offering herself up. "Will you let me see the letter before you send it? I do believe I've got more sense than you have about such things, this minute."

"You wouldn't have any to brag of, even then," said Cornelia with gloomy meekness, and unconscious sarcasm. "Yes, I will let you see the letter."

"Well, then, you needn't go home to write it; you can write in your room here. I want to see that letter, and I sha'n't let it go if there's the least thing wrong in it." She jumped up gayly, as if this were the happiest possible solution of the whole difficulty, and began to push Cornelia out of the room. "Now go, and after you've put yourself in shape, and got your hair done, you'll have some self-respect. I suppose you won't begin to write till you're all as spick and span as if you were going to receive a call from him. I'm such a slouch that I should just sit down and write, looking every which-way--but I know you can't."

She came back to the studio an hour later, and waited impatiently for Cornelia's appearance. She was so long coming that Charmian opened the door, to go and ask her some question, so as to get her to say that she would be with her in a moment, even if she didn't come, and almost ran against the man-servant, who was bringing her a card. She gave a little nervous shriek, and caught it from his salver.

"For Miss Saunders, miss," he said, in respectful deprecation of her precipitate behavior.

"Yes, yes; it's all right. Say that she--is in the studio." Charmian spoke in thick gasps. The card was Ludlow's; and between the man's going and Ludlow's coming, she experienced a succession of sensations which were, perhaps, the most heroically perfect of any in a career so much devoted to the emotions. She did not stop to inquire what she should do after she got Ludlow there, or to ask herself what he was coming for, a little after nine o'clock in the morning; she simply waited his approach in an abandon which exhausted the capabilities of the situation, and left her rather limp and languid when he did appear. If it had been her own affair she could not have entered into it with more zeal, more impassioned interest. So far as she reasoned her action at all, it was intended to keep Ludlow, after she got him there, till Cornelia should come, for she argued that if she should go for her Cornelia would suspect something, and she would not come at all.

XXXVIII.

When Ludlow found Charmian and not Cornelia waiting for him, he managed to get through the formalities of greeting decently, but he had an intensity which he had the effect of not allowing to relax. He sat down with visible self-constraint when Charmian invited him to do so.

"Miss Saunders has just gone to her room; she'll be back in a moment." She added, with wild joy in a fact which veiled the truth, "She is writing a note."

"Oh!" said Ludlow, and he was so clearly able not to say anything more that Charmian instantly soared over him in smooth self-possession. "We were so sorry not to see you last night, Mr. Ludlow. It was a perfect success, except your not coming, of course."

"Thank you," said Ludlow, "I was--I couldn't come--at the last moment."

"Yes, I understood you intended to come. I do wish you could have seen Miss Saunders! I don't believe she ever looked lovelier. I wanted her to go in costume, you know, but she wouldn't, and in fact when I saw her, I saw that she needn't. She doesn't have to eke herself out, as some people do."

Ludlow was aware of the opening for a civil speech, but he was quite helpless to use it. He stared blankly at Charmian, who went on:

"And then, Cornelia is so perfectly truthful, you know, so sincere, that any sort of disguise would have been out of character with her, and I'm glad she went simply as herself. We were up so late talking, that we slept till I don't know when, this morning. I forgot to wind my clock. I suppose it's very late."

"No," said Ludlow, "it's so very early that I ought to apologize for coming, I suppose. But I wished to see Miss Saunders----" He stopped, feeling that he had given too rude a hint.

Charmian did not take it amiss. "Oh, Cornelia is usually up at all sorts of unnatural hours of the day. I expected when she came here to spend the week with me, we should have some fun, sitting up and talking, but last night is the only time we have had a real good talk, and I suppose that was because we were so excited that even Cornelia couldn't go to sleep at once. I do wish you could have seen some of the costumes, Mr. Ludlow!"

Ludlow began to wonder whether Cornelia had got his letter, or whether, if she had got it, she had kept the matter so carefully from Charmian that she had not suspected anything was wrong. Or, what was more likely, had not Cornelia cared? Was she glad to be released, and had she joyfully hailed his letter and its enclosure as a means of escape? His brain reeled with these doubts, which were the next moment relieved with the crazy hope that if his letter had not yet been delivered, he might recover it, and present the affair in the shape he had now come to give it. He believed that Charmian must have some motive for what she was doing and saying beyond the hospitable purpose of amusing him till Cornelia should appear. We always think that other people have distinct motives, but for the most part in our intercourse with one another we are really as superficially intentioned, when we are intentioned at all, as Charmian was in wishing to get what sensation she could out of the dramatic situation by hovering darkly over it, and playing perilously about its circumference. She divined that he was not there to deepen its tragical tendency at least, and she continued without well knowing what she was going to say next: "Yes, I think that the real reason why Cornelia wouldn't go in costume was that she felt that it was a kind of subterfuge. She keeps me in a perfect twitter of self-reproach. I tell her I would rather have the conscience of the worst kind of person than hers; I could get along with it a great deal easier. Don't you think you could, Mr. Ludlow?"

"Yes, yes," said Ludlow aimlessly. He rose up, and pretended a curiosity about a sketch on the wall; he could not endure to sit still.

"Won't you have a cup of tea?" asked Charmian. "Cornelia and I had some last night, and----"

"No, thank you," said Ludlow.

"Do let me ring for some coffee, then?"

"No, I have just breakfasted--that is, I have breakfasted----"

"Why, were you up early, too?" said Charmian, with what seemed to Ludlow a supernatural shrewdness. "It's perfectly telepathic! The Psychical Research ought to have it. It would be such fun if we could get together and compare our reasons for waking so early. But Cornelia and I didn't know just when we did wake, and I suppose the Psychical Research wouldn't care for it without. She seems to be writing a pretty long note, or a pretty hard one!" Ludlow lifted his downcast eyes, and gave her a look that was ghastly. "Did you look at your watch?" she asked.

"Look at my watch?" he returned in a daze.

"When you woke, that is."