Forthwith, Mrs. Devar became more dazed than ever. She felt that she must confide in someone, so she wrote a full account of events at Symon's Yat to her son. It was the worst possible thing she could have done. Unconsciously--for she was now anxious to help instead of hindering Medenham's wooing--some of the gall in her nature distilled itself into words. She dwelt on the river episode with all the sly rancor of the inveterate scandalmonger. She was really striving to depict her own confusion of ideas when stunned by the discovery of Medenham's position, but she only succeeded in stringing together a series of ill-natured innuendoes. Sandwiched between each paragraph of the story were the true gossip's catchwords--thus: "What was I to think?" "What would people say if they knew?" "My dear, just picture your mother's predicament when midnight struck, and there was no news!" "Of course, one makes allowances for an American girl," and the rest. Though this soured woman was a ready letter-writer, she was no reader, or in days to come she might have parodied Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot": Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipped me in ink?--my parents', or my own? Not content with her outpouring to Devar she dashed off a warning to Marigny. She imagined that the Frenchman would grin at his broken fortunes, and look about for another heiress! And so, abandoning a meal to the fever of scribbling, she packed more mischief into an hour than any elderly marriage-broker in Europe that day, and waddled off to the letterbox with a sense of consolation, strong in the belief that the morrow would bring telegrams to guide her in the fray with Mrs. Leland. Medenham sent a short note to his father, saying that he would reach London about midnight next day and asking him to invite Aunt Susan to lunch on Tuesday. Then he waited in vain for sight of Cynthia until, driven to extremes by tea-time, he got one of the maids to take her a verbal message, in which he stated that the climb to the summit of the Yat could be made in half an hour. The reply was deadening. "Miss Vanrenen says she is busy. She does not intend to leave the hotel to-day; and will you please have the car ready at eight o'clock to-morrow morning." Then Medenham smiled ferociously, for he had just ascertained that the local telegraph office opened at eight. "Kindly tell Miss Vanrenen that we had better make a start some few minutes earlier, because we have a long day's run before us," he said. And he hummed a verse of "Young Lochinvar" as he moved away, thereby provoking the maid-servant to an expression of opinion that some folk thought a lot of themselves--but as for London shuffers and their manners--well there! CHAPTER XII MASQUES, ANCIENT AND MODERN