Chapter VI: Part 6

“And in the lulls of the storm,” Mr. Hatterly continued, “she said to me what nothing but the extremity of the occasion would induce me to repeat, my dear Mrs. Billington; ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I am yours, I am all yours, and yours forever.’”

MISS BILLINGTON (_as before, but more so_).--“That wasn’t the Peterson girl. That was Mamie Jackson, for I have known of her saying it twice before.”

Mrs. Billington leaned back in her chair, and fanned herself with her handkerchief.

“Oh, Mr. Hatterly!” she cried.

Mr. Hatterly leaned forward and captured one of Mrs. Billington’s hands, while she covered her eyes with the other.

“Call me Jack,” he said.

“I--I’m afraid I shall have to,” sobbed Mrs. Billington.

MISS BILLINGTON (_as before, grimly_).--“Mamie Jackson’s mother won’t; I know _that_!”

“And then,” Mr. Hatterly continued, “she said to me, ‘Jack, I am glad of this fate. I can speak now as I never could have spoken before.’”

MISS BILLINGTON (_as before, but highly charged with electricity_).--“Now I want to know what she did say when she spoke.”

Mr. Hatterly’s clear and fluent voice continued to report the interesting conversation, while Mrs. Billington sobbed softly, and permitted her kind old hand to be fondled.

“‘Jack,’ she said,” Mr. Hatterly went on, “‘life might have separated us, but death unites us.’”

MISS BILLINGTON (_as before, but with clenched hands and set lips_).--“_That_ is neither one of those girls. They haven’t got the sand. Whoever it is, that settles it.” She flung open the door and swept into the room.

“Jack,” she said, “if I did talk any such ridiculous, absurd, contemptible, utterly despicable nonsense, I don’t _choose_ to have it repeated. Mama, dear, you know we _can_ see a great deal of each other if you can only make Papa come and spend the Summer here by the sea, and we go down to Los Brazos for part of the Winter.”

* * * * *

That evening Miss Carmelita Billington asked her Spanish maid if she had dropped the letter addressed to Mr. Hatterly in the letter-box. The Spanish maid went through a pleasing dramatic performance, in which she first assured her mistress that she _had_; then became aware of a sudden doubt; hunted through six or eight pockets which were not in her dress, and then produced the crumpled envelope unopened. She begged ten thousand pardons; she cursed herself and the day she was born, and her incapable memory; and expressed a willingness to drown herself, which might have been more terrifying had she ever before displayed any willingness to enter into intimate relations with water.

Miss Billington treated her with unusual indulgence.

“It’s all right, Concha,” she said; “it didn’t matter in the least, only Mr. Hatterly told me that he had never received it, and so I thought I’d ask you.”

Then, as the girl was leaving the room, Carmelita called her back, moved by a sudden impulse.

“Oh, Concha!” she said; “you wanted one of those shell breast-pins, didn’t you Here, take this and buy yourself one!” and she held out a dollar-bill.

When she reached her own room, Concha put the dollar-bill in a gayly-painted little box on top of a new five-dollar bill, and hid them both under her prayer-book.

“Women,” she said, in her simple Spanish way; “women are pigs. The gentleman, he gives me five dollars, only that I put the letter in my pocket; the lady, she gets the gentleman, and she gives me one dollar, and I hasten out of the room that she shall not take it back. Women--women are pigs!”