Let us follow him upstairs to the small suite of rooms which had
been set apart for him by his uncle's wish. These consisted of a
sitting-room where he smoked, a bedroom adjoining, and a little
ante-room which had a stone balcony overlooking the park.
John Temple went into his sitting-room, which opened from a corridor,
and having pushed the door nearly close behind him, he pulled out his
letter and began reading May's fond tender words with a smile.
Then suddenly his face darkened.
"We have been all greatly interested," he read, "about a diamond
robbery, which, I dare say, you have seen in the newspapers. The maid
of the popular and, I believe, pretty actress, Miss Kathleen Weir, had
stolen her mistress' diamonds and substituted false ones instead of
them. How we came to hear so much about it is that Mr. Webster, the
nephew of the Miss Websters, was one of the barristers in the case for
the prosecution and Miss Kathleen Weir was so pleased by the way Mr.
Webster conducted it that she invited him to her house. He says she
is handsome and clever, but not exactly what he calls 'nice.' But all
the same I think he rather admires her, and their acquaintance seems
to progress, in spite of the alarm of his dear old aunts! Did you ever
see her? Some time when you are in town--and when is that dear time to
be?--you must take me to see her act."
John Temple went on frowning as he read these innocent words. Here was
a mine under his feet indeed! He knew the nature of Kathleen Weir; the
outspoken frank nature, that was just as likely as not to confide her
whole history to a stranger. What if she told of her early marriage
to this Webster, who might repeat it to his aunts? He had warned the
Misses Webster to keep his marriage to May a secret, and May did not
bear his name. Still in some moment the old ladies might reveal it to
their nephew, and then no one could tell where the mischief might end.
John Temple flung the letter on the table and began walking restlessly
up and down the room, thinking what it would be best to do. "She must
leave Pembridge Terrace at once," he decided. But then, how could this
be arranged? If he went up to town he might meet Webster, and May was
too young and girlish to go about house-seeking alone.
"That confounded woman," he thought bitterly of Kathleen Weir, "is
forever in my way."
He was full of impatience, chafing against fate and the mad folly
of his youth. The door of the bedroom beyond was standing open, and
farther still he could see from the balcony window of the ante-room a
green patch of the park. He went into this ante-room, opened the window
and stepped out on the balcony, still cursing his ill-luck. He did not
see, as he leaned over the balustrade, that someone had entered his
sitting-room, on the table of which the letter from May was lying open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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