He tore open the envelope. In delicacy Reardon and Biffen averted their eyes. There was silence for a minute, then a strange ejaculation from Whelpdale caused his friends to look up at him.
He had gone pale, and was frowning at the sheet of paper which trembled in his hand.
'No bad news, I hope?' Biffen ventured to say.
Whelpdale let himself sink into a chair.
'Now if this isn't too bad!' he exclaimed in a thick voice. 'If this isn't monstrously unkind! I never heard anything so gross as this--never!'
The two waited, trying not to smile.
'She writes--that she has met an old lover--in Birmingham--that it was with him she had quarrelled-not with her father at all--that she ran away to annoy him and frighten him--that she has made it up again, and they're going to be married!'
He let the sheet fall, and looked so utterly woebegone that his friends at once exerted themselves to offer such consolation as the case admitted of. Reardon thought better of Whelpdale for this emotion; he had not believed him capable of it.
'It isn't a case of vulgar cheating!' cried the forsaken one presently. 'Don't go away thinking that. She writes in real distress and penitence--she does indeed. Oh, the devil! Why did Ilet her go to Birmingham? A fortnight more, and I should have had her safe. But it's just like my luck. Do you know that this is the third time I've been engaged to be married?--no, by Jove, the fourth! And every time the girl has got out of it at the last moment. What an unlucky beast I am! A girl who was positively my ideal! I haven't even a photograph of her to show you; but you'd be astonished at her face. Why, in the devil's name, did I let her go to Birmingham?'
The visitors had risen. They felt uncomfortable, for it seemed as if Whelpdale might find vent for his distress in tears.
'We had better leave you,' suggested Biffen. 'It's very hard--it is indeed.'
'Look here! Read the letter for yourselves! Do!'
They declined, and begged him not to insist.
'But I want you to see what kind of girl she is. It isn't a case of farcical deceiving--not a bit of it! She implores me to forgive her, and blames herself no end. Just my luck! The third--no, the fourth time, by Jove! Never was such an unlucky fellow with women. It's because I'm so damnably poor; that's it, of course!'
Reardon and his companion succeeded at length in getting away, though not till they had heard the virtues and beauty of the vanished girl described again and again in much detail. Both were in a state of depression as they left the house.
'What think you of this story?' asked Biffen. 'Is this possible in a woman of any merit?'
'Anything is possible in a woman,' Reardon replied, harshly.
They walked in silence as far as Portland Road Station. There, with an assurance that he would come to a garret-supper before leaving London, Reardon parted from his friend and turned westward.
As soon as he had entered, Amy's voice called to him:
'Here's a letter from Jedwood, Edwin!'
He stepped into the study.