“Really, darling?” cried Ina.

“Really and truly,” said Di, “and he knows it, too.”

Lulu listened and read all.

“I wondered,” said Ina pensively, “I wondered if you wouldn’t see that Bobby isn’t much beside that nice Mr. Cornish!”

When Di had gone upstairs, Ina said to Lulu in a manner of cajoling confidence: 

“Sister——­” she rarely called her that, “why did you and Di have the black bag?”

So that after all it was a relief to Lulu to hear Dwight ask casually:  “By the way, Lulu, haven’t I got some mail somewhere about?”

“There are two letters on the parlour table,” Lulu answered.  To Ina she added:  “Let’s go in the parlour.”

As they passed through the hall, Mrs. Bett was going up the stairs to bed—­when she mounted stairs she stooped her shoulders, bunched her extremities, and bent her head.  Lulu looked after her, as if she were half minded to claim the protection so long lost.

Dwight lighted the gas.  “Better turn down the gas jest a little,” said he, tirelessly.

Lulu handed him the two letters.  He saw Ninian’s writing and looked up, said “A-ha!” and held it while he leisurely read the advertisement of dental furniture, his Ina reading over his shoulder.  “A-ha!” he said again, and with designed deliberation turned to Ninian’s letter.  “An epistle from my dear brother Ninian.”  The words failed, as he saw the unsealed flap.

“You opened the letter?” he inquired incredulously.  Fortunately he had no climaxes of furious calm for high occasions.  All had been used on small occasions.  “You opened the letter” came in a tone of no deeper horror than “You picked the flower”—­once put to Lulu.

She said nothing.  As it is impossible to continue looking indignantly at some one who is not looking at you, Dwight turned to Ina, who was horror and sympathy, a nice half and half.

“Your sister has been opening my mail,” he said.

“But, Dwight, if it’s from Ninian—­”

“It is my mail,” he reminded her.  “She had asked me if she might open it.  Of course I told her no.”

“Well,” said Ina practically, “what does he say?”

“I shall open the letter in my own time.  My present concern is this disregard of my wishes.”  His self-control was perfect, ridiculous, devilish.  He was self-controlled because thus he could be more effectively cruel than in temper.  “What excuse have you to offer?”

Lulu was not looking at him.  “None,” she said—­not defiantly, or ingratiatingly, or fearfully.  Merely, “None.”

“Why did you do it?”

She smiled faintly and shook her head.

“Dwight,” said Ina, reasonably, “she knows what’s in it and we don’t.  Hurry up.”

“She is,” said Dwight, after a pause, “an ungrateful woman.”

He opened the letter, saw the clipping, the avowal, with its facts.

“A-ha!” said he.  “So after having been absent with my brother for a month, you find that you were not married to him.”