“H’m!” said she; “so this is what caused all the trouble?  You don’t mind?”

And, considering silence as equivalent to acquiescence, she drew out a letter at hazard, and read aloud: 

“’Just a line, woman of all the world, to tell you ... but what have I to tell you, after all?  Only the old, old message, so often told that it seems scarcely worth while to bother the postman about it.  Just three words that innumerable dead lips have whispered, while life was yet good and old people were unreasonable and skies were blue—­three words that our unborn children’s children will whisper to one another when we too have gone to help the grasses in their growing or to nourish the victorious, swaying hosts of some field of daffodils.  Just three words—­that is my message to you, my lady....  Ah, it is weary waiting for a sight of your dear face through these long days that are so much alike and all so empty and colorless!  My heart grows hungry as I think of your great, green eyes and of the mouth that is like a little wound.  I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world!  I want you....  Ah, time travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with their futility.  For my desire of you—­’

“The remainder,” said Mrs. Pendomer, clearing her throat once more, “appears to consist of insanity and heretical sentiments, in about equal proportions, all written at the top of a boy’s breaking voice.  It isn’t Colonel Musgrave’s voice—­quite—­is it?”

During the reading, Patricia, leaning on one elbow, had regarded her companion with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.  “Now, you see!” she cried indignantly; “he loved her!  He was simply crazy about her.”

“Why, yes.”  Mrs. Pendomer replaced the letter, carefully, almost caressingly, among its companions.  “My dear, it was years ago.  I think time has by this wreaked a vengeance far more bitter than you could ever plan on the woman who, after all, never thought to wrong you.  For the bitterest of all bitter things to a woman—­to some women, at least—­is to grow old.”

She sighed, and her well-manicured fingers fretted for a moment with the counterpane.

“Ah, who will write the tragedy of us women who were ’famous Southern beauties’ once?  We were queens of men while our youth lasted, and diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us.  But nothing was expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much of, and that is our tragedy.  For very few things, my dear, are more pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind cannot—­cannot, because of its very nature—­reach to anything higher!  Middle-age strips her of everything—­the admiration, the flattery, the shallow merriment—­all the little things that her little mind longs for—­and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful efforts to remain young.  And the world