She made a
hopeless gesture with her small, bony hand.
"Yes," she said, "it is just like that. No one would believe it. The
worst cleverness of the things he does, is that when one tells of them,
they sound like lies. I have a bewildered feeling that I should not
believe them myself if I had not seen them. He met the boy in the park
and took the note from him. He came back to the house and up to my room,
where I was dressing quickly to go to Mr. Ffolliott."
She stopped for quite a minute, rather as if to recover breath.
"He closed the door behind him and came towards me with the note in his
hand. And I saw in a second the look that always terrifies me, in his
face. He had opened the note and he smoothed out the paper quietly and
said, 'What is this. I could not help it--I turned cold and began to
shiver. I could not imagine what was coming."
"'Is it my note to Mr. Ffolliott?' I asked.
"'Yes, it is your note to Mr. Ffolliott,' and he read it aloud. "Do
not come to the house. I will meet you in Bartyon Wood." That is a nice
note for a man's wife to have written, to be picked up and read by a
stranger, if your confessor is not cautious in the matter of letters
from women----'
"When he begins a thing in that way, you may always know that he has
planned everything--that you can do nothing--I always know.
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