"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing--or not at least to you," she added. "Still----" he began. "Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me? What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing pink organdie after she has passed forty, and I have known a woman to go on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why not let me be foolish, if I want to be?" "If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word of this farrago, I will be--qualified in various ways." "But you don't have to understand," she pleaded. "You mean--?" he asked. "I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow." "Nonsense!" And he was conscious, with vexation, that he had undeniably flushed. "I mean, then, I am a woman, and _I_ understand. Everything is as near what it should be as is possible while Patricia is seeing so much of--we will call it the artistic temperament." Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. "But if I went on in that line you would believe I was jealous. And heaven knows I am not the least bit so--with the unavoidable qualification that, being a woman, I can't help rising superior to common-sense." He said, "You mean Jack Charteris--? But what on earth has he to do with these letters?" "I don't mean any proper names at all. I simply mean you are not to undo my work. It would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up all this"--she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of Matocton,--"and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty little stories, and keep us amused. So _please_ be sensible, Rudolph." "Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest herald of joy," observed Colonel Musgrave. "Only I do _not_ understand why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous affair----" "You really do not understand----?" But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did not.